


Shattered

by silversundown



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-04 12:55:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14593473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silversundown/pseuds/silversundown
Summary: Carol's fight with Morgan has some unexpected consequences. Daryl tries to put the pieces back together again. Set during season six.





	1. Chapter 1

He’s covered in blood and gore and all he really wants to do is find the nearest flat surface and collapse onto it, but he can’t do that until he finds Carol. Has to make sure she survived the horde before he can do anything that even resembles relaxing now that the streets of Alexandria are littered with the dead and relatively safe again.   
  
He should see Denise first too, Daryl thinks. Wincing as he moves his arm and feeling fresh droplets of blood seep out of the open wound. He’d barely had time to wrap a cloth around it in the heat of the moment and now that he’s stationary again and the adrenaline is wearing off it burns even worse than before.  
  
He’s asked more than a few people about Carol, even the one in the plaid shirt who’s become newly obsessed with her, and so far come up empty. The more people who simply give him a shoulder shrug and a non answer the more his worry increases ten fold. His eyes scan the bodies looking for silver hair among them and his stomach rolls each time he thinks he might spot some, followed by relief when he’s proven wrong.  
  
With a herd like this having overtaken the community here’s no way she’d sit on the sidelines, so the complete lack of her crawls up his spine and sticks there.  
  
He’s also more than a little bit annoyed that no one else is worried too. Not yet anyway. They seem to think she’ll turn up and to be fair they’re knee deep in their own shit, but for him she’s the only thing that matters and his panic only grows higher and higher until he spots Rosita coming out of the medical area and he hasn’t asked her yet so he makes a beeline in that direction.  
  
“You seen Carol?”  
  
The look on her face makes his heart drop into his stomach but she quickly corrects it and explains. “She’s alive. She’s hurt though, got knocked around, hit her head on the concrete floor. She’s inside with Denise, hasn’t woken up yet.”  
  
Relief at hearing she’s alive gives way to confusion and anger at her current condition. He’s torn between running in there straight away to see her for himself or questioning Rosita further and since he needs answers Carol can’t give him yet he goes with option two. “What the hell happened?”  
  
She hesitates, her eyes shifting back and forth like she’s trying to craft an answer and when she finally replies his blood boils and he sees several shades of red at once.  
  
“She had a fight with Morgan over one of the wolves. Morgan wanted him alive, Carol didn’t. It ended with Morgan sort of…body slamming her into the ground and now here we are.”  
  
“He in there?" He’s heard enough and he’s livid, ready to face down with Morgan the moment he sees him and only barely registers Rosita’s fearful voice trailing after him in the background while he blows through the door into the medical area.  
  
He spots Morgan immediately, leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, watching Denise tend to Carol who looks impossibly frail on the bed. Seeing her there, so vulnerable and hurt and knowing it’s because of the man in front of him keeps his feet moving fast until he’s right in front of Morgan, his fist pulling back and catching him directly in the nose, crunching the tiny bones there and sending a splatter of blood in an arc across the floor.  
  
If Morgan knew what was coming he never moved, never said a word, just stood there and accepted the blow and Daryl doesn’t know how he feels about that right now except that he fucking deserved it. Morgan spits out a glob of blood, coughing and holding himself up against the wall, his other hand bracing against his broken nose and Daryl isn’t going to hit him again even though he wants to. One good hit is enough, he thinks. He apparently didn’t give Carol that much courtesy but Daryl isn’t enough of an asshole to beat him entirely senseless no matter how badly his fingers itch to do so. He is however, going to get some fucking answers.  
  
“I deserved that.”  
  
Morgan’s voice is gurgly and wet and Daryl only nods to him, his fists still clenched in anger at his sides. “Damn right you deserved it. You hit her? You throw her into the ground? You did that?” He punctuates his last question with an angry gesture toward the bed where Carol lays and Morgan nods regretfully.  
  
“I did. I didn’t want to, but we fought and I lost control. I regret it. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”  
  
“Yeah I’m sure that’s what her husband used to say when he beat her too. Bet it means just as much right now as it did then.”  
  
He is still so fucking angry and unwilling to let this go and he lets that piece of personal information slip when he probably shouldn’t have. That isn’t his story to tell and Morgan of all people has no right to it, but his mouth was moving before his brain could stop it. Morgan only hangs his head, looking horrified at Daryl’s mention of her late husband’s abusive nature.  
  
“I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry. Denise says she’ll be ok. Just waiting for her to wake up.”  
  
“She better wake up.” There’s a threat there that goes unspoken and he’s sure that Morgan understands the meaning. He might be good with that stick but if Carol doesn’t open her eyes again Daryl will do his best to make sure he eats it.  
  
“Her vitals are good, doesn’t seem to have any broken bones although the soft tissue along her spine is already showing some light bruising. Her pupils are a little dilated, but that could resolve itself shortly. All we can do now is wait.”  
  
To her credit Denise is calm and professional when she tells them Carol’s condition and her smooth tone is slightly reassuring. There’s one chair next to Carol’s bed and Daryl leaves Morgan with one last disgusted look to drift over to it, collapsing into the orange plastic with a heavy sigh and dripping his own blood onto the floor below him.  
  
Denise is tending to his wound a moment later and he lets her do it without comment, taking the wet cloth she gives him to wipe the grime off his neck and arms, only noticing later that Morgan has already left.  
  
“He feels really bad. I know that doesn’t excuse it.”  
  
Daryl huffs at her. “Don’t know the whole story yet but whatever happened in there don’t give him the right to be throwin’ her around. Ain’t a fair fight.”  
  
Denise nods, continuing her methodical cleaning and patching of his wound.  
  
“I shoulda been here…coulda stopped this. Fuck.”  
  
“Oh, so we’re doing that now?”  
  
Her voice is knowing and slightly sarcastic and he squints at her. “Doin’ what?”  
  
“The guilt thing you like so much. Don't even know you that well yet but I can tell you’re good at it too. A fly can’t fart around here without you taking blame for it. This isn’t your fault though. Not hers either. It’s ninty nine percent Morgan’s fault and one percent this life we’re all stuck in. You couldn’t be here because of that one percent. Don’t start ‘what ifing’ it.”  
  
She replies with a certain tone that makes him feel like she’s leaving out a few important parts of information and he can’t pinpoint why but it’s there, grating at his thoughts and he grabs onto it. “You know more about what happened?”  
  
She sighs as he ignores her attempt at getting him to reject his own guilt complex and jumps right to more important matters. “I was there. It was a whole thing. We’ll talk about it later but for now, just trust me when I say it was a clusterfuck but it’s resolved and all that matters now is that you sit here with her until she wakes up again.”  
  
“Which is right now.” He leans forward toward the bed, seeing Carol’s eyes slit open and close again several times while Denise takes her pulse with two fingers pressed to her wrist.  
  
“She’s coming out of it, her heart rate is speeding up. Go ahead and talk to her but keep it low, I bet her head hurts.”  
  
He doesn’t know what the fuck to say, feels put on the spot but this is important so he tries anyway. Keeps his voice soft and puts one hand gently on her forearm, rubbing his thumb along the skin there in an effort to urge her out of the fog she’s caught in.  
  
“Hey, you’re all right. You’re safe. I’m here with you, Denise is here too. Come on and wake up.”  
  
Her head tilts towards his voice as if on instinct, her lashes blinking rapidly and her eyes opening fully while she tries to orient herself. Her gaze is everywhere at once, flitting around the room, up and down and side to side, taking in every detail she can about her surroundings until they finally land on his face, boring right into his soul and knocking the wind out of him because he knows Carol….and that isn’t her.  
  
“How long have I been sleeping? Where am I? What time is it?” Her voice is raspy and raw and he reaches for some water at her bedside table, handing it to her and tilting the straw toward her mouth.  
  
“More than a few hours at least. You’re in Alexandria, in the medical area.” Denise picks up his slack on the time frame and he’s grateful but he’s still shaken to his core by the complete lack of recognition on her face. He hopes he’s wrong, that maybe he’s just sleep deprived and seeing things and she’s right as rain, but his heart knows that’s not true. There’s been a distance between them lately and yet even with that giant crater holding them apart he can still tell that she’s different in a way that has nothing to do with flowery sweaters and baking cookies.  
  
She hasn’t responded to Denise at all but her brows are knit together and her mouth is open just a little bit and he’s terrified to ask her these next questions but someone has to and right now that someone is him.  
  
“Do you know your name?”  
  
She instantly looks at him like he’s got seven heads, her face scrunching up and her lips pursing. “Of course I do. My name is Carol.”  
  
He’s relieved that she at least has that answer right but now he’s got to dig deeper and fuck his life he really, really doesn’t want to. “Do you know who I am?”  
  
The blank look he receives is confirmation enough but then she voices it too and his heart shatters before he can take his next breath. “No. Should I? You’re not dressed like a doctor but…I don’t know.”  
  
Daryl sits back a few inches, shock and denial written all over his expression and then she’s looking at him with equal parts confusion and horror. His own distress is transferring over to her in record time and her tone is slowly climbing in it’s intensity, higher pitched at the end of each word.  
  
“Oh my god, should I? What happened? Why am I here? Who are you?”  
  
“Easy, you’re safe. You had an accident and got hit on the head so a few things might be fuzzy right now but that’s normal. You’re at home with your family and your friends. People who care about you. I’m Denise, and this is Daryl. You live here. Well, not here in this house, but here in this community. It might take a little bit for all your memories to come back but don’t panic, they will come back.”  
  
He’s so very glad that Denise is here to help him because he’s stuck, unable to respond or comprehend that Carol has no idea who the hell he is. It’s like some sick joke, another layer of torture in a life that just keeps piling shit on them left and right. He thinks he might be shaking, can feel his fingers trembling against his sides as he holds his arms crossed there, can feel his heart beating a mile a minute and knows for sure that his lungs are expelling air at a rapid pace and he tries to correct all that and calm himself because Carol is looking at him like he might fall apart at any moment.  
  
“Daryl, are you ok? You don’t look so good.” She’s legitimately concerned, her words soft and soothing and he laughs a little because she sounds so much like her in that moment, always worried about someone else, but this time it’s not him that needs the concern, it’s her.  
  
“Am I ok? You’re the one that got hit on the head and don’t know where you are and you’re asking me if I’m ok?”  
  
“Well, you seem to be taking it a little harder than I am…”  
  
She does have a point. She’s confused but she isn’t having a straight up panic attack about it like he is. In fact, she’s pretty damn calm about this whole situation and he smiles just a fraction at the realization that some things never change. She is poised in the face of disaster as usual.  
  
“Sorry, you ah…you caught me off guard here. What do you remember?”  
  
She inhales heavily, clearly thinking back to her last memories, her fingers fidgeting on the sheets. “I think…I was eating something…pizza? Maybe some pad thai…from the place around the corner. And watching…something on tv. Dammit, I don’t know. And then I woke up here.”  
  
Well fuck, this isn’t good at all because the last time anyone could order pizza or watch tv was before the turn which opens up a whole new set of problems in terms of how to handle her memory loss but he prompts further, trying to close up a few holes in this mystery. Denise is letting him take the lead and he isn’t sure that’s a good idea but he rolls with it anyway.  
  
“Do you know what year it is? How old you are?”  
  
“I don’t know the year…but I’m thirty six. Why what year is it right now, you’re scaring me.”  
  
“It’s twenty fifteen.”  
  
Carol doesn’t respond for a moment, tugging her bottom lip with her teeth while her gaze narrows and he can’t blame her because if he’s remembering correctly she’s forty nine, maybe fifty years old, and she’s lost roughly fifteen years of her life. Gone in a flash. Over a decade and a half of who she was just erased, like it was never really there at all.  
  
She sits up suddenly, the panic he thought she should have been feeling before finally catching up to her, reaching a hand around to her back and gasping at the pain he knows she feels there at the sudden movement.  
  
“It can’t be twenty fifteen that doesn’t make sense…and what hit me? My back is on fire.”  
  
“It’s a long story but what’s important is that your safe and I’m sorry but I ain’t lyin’ about the year. You lost a lot of time but it’s not forever. You’ll get it back. Right?” He looks at Denise with just as much need for reassurance as Carol does and she nods quickly.  
  
“Absolutely. It’ll come back, you just need to stay calm and let it happen. Try not to get too worked up, I know that’s hard, but try. Do you need anything? Thirsty? Hungry? Can’t eat much yet but maybe some soup…I think we have a can of something….”  
  
“No I’m fine. Just tired. And I want answers, I feel you’re leaving out some really important things but…I don’t even know what questions to ask.”  
  
Her voice is frustrated and he can tell she’s on the verge of crying, can see the tears start to well up in the corners of her eyes but she holds them in and even if he can’t give her all the answers right now he tries for something he can provide instead. “Want somethin’ for the pain? We got drugs here.”  
  
She nods to him and he thinks how weird it is that she’s accepting pain meds without a second thought because the Carol he knows would shrug off any injury that didn’t involve a severed limb, refusing drugs and insisting they save it for something more important, but here she is readily taking their meds and sinking back into the bed.  
  
“I’m just so tired. My head is throbbing and I wanna sleep but I’m afraid too.”  
  
“Don’t gotta be afraid. Get some some rest.”  
  
“What if something’s really wrong and I don’t wake up? What if I do wake up and I lost more time? I’m already so confused, Daryl. What kind of accident did I have that wiped out so much of my life?”  
  
“What if you wake up and you got all them memories back where they belong again? Gotta give your brain a chance to heal.” He ignores her question for more details, trying like hell to just keep her calm and avoid having to lay out a bunch of information that’ll make no sense to her right now anyway. She has no context for the answers she wants and he can’t give her any yet.  
  
He can see her lower lip start to tremble and he slowly reaches out toward her hand, intending to grip it in his own, but he pulls back at the last second. Doesn’t want to frighten her. She barely knows him.  
  
“Ok. I’m ok. You’ll stay right? With me? And we can talk more when I wake up?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll be right here. Close your eyes, gonna be just fine.”  
  
She lays there for a moment, pressed into the pillow, squeezing the life out of the blanket covering her with one hand before she finally gives in and starts to drift off.  
  
He leans back into the chair, feeling Denise give him a pat on his good shoulder and whispering in his ear to wake Carol up every few hours before letting her go back to sleep, and then she's exiting the room and he wants to grab her and beg her to stay too because he can’t be trusted with this on his own. He could so easily make this worse for her but there is no question that he’ll stay. He may never let her out of his sight again, especially now that she’s one hundred percent more vulnerable that she ever has been before. This world could kill her in the blink of an eye and she’s blissfully ignorant to all of it’s dangers.  
  
He shudders at the mental image his brain conjures up of her wandering outside the walls and getting taken out by a walker, unable to fight back, terrified as it tears the flesh from her bones and he has to stop thinking like that because he won’t let it happen. He’ll watch her every second if he has to.  
  
There’s something else though, a brief flicker in his mind that tells him this might be a good thing even though it pains him to even acknowledge that. She’d been struggling so much these past few months. He’d seen it happening, each day a little worse than the last until she barely resembled the person he used to know, but even though he was aware of it he’d done nothing more than uselessly wait for her to seek him out. Too wary of pushing too hard and making it worse.  
  
Now, whatever had been holding her under is gone. He watches her face as she sleeps, unlined and relaxed and he knows that whatever awful thing she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about doesn’t linger inside her anymore.  
  
This could be a blessing in disguise. He would easily trade all her memories of him if it meant she never had to take back the ones that haunt her the most.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

She can’t believe how old she’s gotten. Standing in front of a mirror across the room from her bed, running her fingertips over the lines and creases that weren’t there the night before. Looking back at a reflection that shouldn’t be hers yet. It was the first thing Carol wanted to do when she woke up and with the room empty except for Daryl, fast asleep in a uncomfortable looking chair by her bed she’d quickly padded over to a small mirror on the wall. Wincing the entire way at the pain in her lower back, wondering just how the hell that happened in the first place because she hadn’t gotten a whole lot in the way of answers the night before.  
  
Then she’d found herself staring at an unfamiliar reflection and all she could see was a face she didn’t recognize. There are circles under her eyes and a hallow look to her features and she doesn’t think all of that is due to her recent accident. These memories she can’t find yet have made their mark and it’s clear as day in the person who stares back at her.  
  
Then she starts to wonder what else is different, because if her face isn’t hers anymore then maybe the rest of her body isn’t either and she’s barely able to keep from stripping right then and there in order to see all of herself. Doesn’t want to give the poor guy in the chair a heart attack though if he should wake up.  
  
So she runs her hands up her shirt instead, over her ribs and around her back, finding little bumps and raised tissue here and there, a few circles on her lower back…a longer more vertical scar across her side, has no idea what they could be from but she’d earned them somehow and the curiosity nags at her.   
  
Her legs are next and she pulls up her pant legs to find a few more marks along one calf but she can’t get to her thighs or her hips like this and is about to reach her hands down the front of the hideous khakis she’s wearing, looking for more scars and evidence of a life she doesn’t remember but her fingers brush over a deeper line across her lower belly instead, horizontal and faded and when she looks at it, long since healed over but still pressed together in an odd sort of way her breath hitches.  
  
That’s how Daryl finds her a few minutes later, standing across the room with her shirt halfway up and her hands splayed across her lower belly, staring at a c-section scar for a child she doesn’t know. She’d birthed someone and has no memory of it at all.   
  
“Hey, you ok? Didn’t mean to fall asleep, was supposed to keep wakin’ you up cause of your head.”  
  
He’s giving her a curious look and she thinks she sees a bit of fear there too, like he’s afraid she’s going to ask the most obvious question and he’s right because she is. “Where is she? He? Are they here?”  
  
She wants to meet this person and doesn’t. It’s an strange feeling, to know you’re someone’s mother but not have the ability to call up their face or their name. She feels no attachment to her child but the lack of emotion is distressing in itself.  
  
He sighs, walking over to her and she thinks he might be phrasing an answer in his head by the way he’s suddenly started chewing on his own lip and she doesn’t want carefully placed words, she just wants the truth. “Just tell me.”  
  
“She’s not here.”  
  
“She…it was a girl.” Her voice is barely a whisper and she gives the scar and one last touch before moving her hands away and folding them across her chest. “Where is she? I want to see her…I think. No, I do. I absolutely do.”  
  
The look on his face is pained and his gaze shifting to the floor makes her heart drop. “Oh. Something happened? She didn’t make it?”  
  
He shakes his head at her, confirming her deductions, his eyes regretful and watery and she thinks how wrong it is that she doesn’t feel that too. Her own eyes stay dry and while she wishes it were different…she can’t mourn someone she never knew.   
  
Daryl knew her though, she can tell that much by the way he struggles with this topic and her mind races to piece together how. Was he her father? Step father? Just a friend? Family of another kind? There’s a hundred different reasons why her daughter’s death could have impacted him so much. She wants to ask him who he is to her, who he was to her child, how she passed but the answers won’t be any different later and she already feels badly for bringing it up. She’s forcing him relive bad memories and something tells her that’s not a thing they do very often. Decides to leave it be for now. “I’m sorry.”  
  
He inhales sharply, like he wants to correct her but his mouth only forms a thin line while he nods. “Me too.”  
  
They stand there staring at each other for a few beats, both unsure of how to proceed before he breaks the awkward silence. “You sleep ok? Hungry? Hed still hurting?”  
  
“Slept fine. I could eat. Head is still throbbing right along with my back.”  
  
“Ima ask Denise for some more drugs when she gets back. Ain’t gotta suffer. What are you doing all the way over here?”  
  
Then she remembers what she’d been doing and feels silly, gesturing toward the mirror and quirking an eyebrow.   
  
“Looking at my mother. Apparently I went to bed and aged fifteen years overnight. Weird how that happens, huh…oh, and my hair is different. Really different.”  
  
He nods thoughtfully, scratching the back of his neck while he watches her run her fingers through her suddenly short hair. “That’s gotta be…odd.”  
  
She laughs a little, her stomach growling to indicate just how hungry she actually is. “Odd is an understatement. And then I got curious what else is different about me and I almost got naked trying to find out but I figured that might be inappropriate, all things considered. So, you’re welcome.”  
  
As if on cue he blushes right then and there, just a tiny amount of heat becoming visible on the tips of his ears and up his neck and she smiles in response. Didn’t realize this one was so easy.   
  
“Ah…thanks?”  
  
“Don’t mention it. No promises for the future though. I feel like it’s nothing you haven’t seen before anyway. But that’s beside the point, the point is I stood here for what felt like forever hoping that all these new scars and bumps and bruising I was finding would trigger something but they didn’t. It’s all just…blank. Other than thinking I must be the clumsiest person alive I’ve got nothing. How can I remember my name, how to use a spoon, how to walk and talk but I can’t remember such a big chunk of my life?”  
  
He’s looking at her with a vague sort of puzzlement while she rattles off the words in a semi agitated tone but he quickly recovers, shrugging. “I don’t know. It’ll come back though. Denise says it could happen any time.”  
  
“Yeah…any time now. Hey, do I need to be in a hospital? Because Denise is great but I feel like this isn’t the most…professional of places and if I’ve got a brain injury I should be getting a scan or a MRI or whatever happens when they put you in that machine, right?”  
  
Now he really looks like a deer in the headlights and she hasn't got a clue why. Waits there for him to finally supply her with a valid answer, tilting her head and raising a brow.  
  
“That’s not really possible right now. I’d take you if I could but we’re sort of stuck here.”  
  
“Here? In this room or in this community? I don’t wanna play twenty questions with you. I need answers, Daryl. Full complete sentences or I’m gonna go even more crazy than I already am?”  
  
He’s sweet and he seems to really care about her…and he’s easy on the eyes, but the man clearly has a hard time communicating and that’s even more frustrating than it would normally be considering the situation and she is about five seconds away from throttling the information out of him.  
  
“In this community. There’s a state of emergency. Natural disaster type thing. It’s safe here, we can’t leave right now but eventually it’ll be ok again.”  
  
“What like a hurricane or an earthquake because we don’t have those in Ohio. What kind of emergency?”  
  
She has no idea why this is so hard for him but it is. He’s sort of pacing now, slowly, running a hand across his face and giving her a measured look and she can see the wheels turning while he thinks of her answer. He stops briefly to part the window blinds and look outside and that’s more than a little weird, makes her scratch her temple while she waits and then she’s spreading her hands wide, her expression leaving no room for doubt that if he doesn’t tell her what she needs to know right this second she’s going to march out that door and find out for herself.  
  
“Ok, I’m gonna tell you some things but Denise says it’s not a good idea to overload you on a bunch of stuff at once, so you’re gonna have to trust me when I don’t give you all the details right now. You’re not in Ohio, you’re in Virgina. And it’s not a hurricane it’s a health situation. Like the flu but worse. Contagious. Best that people stay where they are until it’s contained. Hospital is a no go, cities are a no go, basically anything outside the walls here are dangerous right now.”  
  
“Are you sure we’re safe here?”  
  
He nods quickly, crossing the few feet between them and looking her straight in the eye and despite the fact that she doesn’t know this man at all she believes his next words to be true.   
  
“I’m sure. You’re safe, nothing’s gonna happen to you here. I promise. We can leave this house just gotta stay inside the walls for now. That’s the important part, ok? I need you to promise me that you won’t leave the walls, not for anything.”  
  
He’s impossibly serious, trying to convey to her how important this is and the last thing she wants is to die of some mutated flu strain so she readily agrees. “Ok. Ok, I promise. If you say it’s safe here, it’s safe.”  
  
He seems relatively satisfied with her answer and after another check out the window that’s no less odd than the first time he’d done it, he gives her a welcome suggestion.  “Come on, lets find some food? Or I can get some and bring it back here if you don’t wanna leave?”  
  
She really wants food and five seconds ago she really wanted to leave this house, but now that she knows there’s some sort of flu ravaging the world just outside those doors she isn’t so sure. He seems sure though, and entirely confident about going outside so she tries her best to trust this person she only just met. Oddly enough, it’s not that difficult to do so.   
  
At least she made one good choice in the last fifteen years, picking a man.  
  
“Can we go home? We live here right? There’s food there? I don’t really want see anyone else right now especially if they know me and I don’t know them I already feel so…awkward and out of place and nothing makes sense.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll take ya home. Got food there, you’re always cookin’ something real good too.”  
  
She scrunches her face up a little, bewildered by his comment. “I am? I’m not the best cook, I can follow directions but that’s about it. I’ll take your word for it though. You know me better than I do right now.”  
  
He balks a little at her off handed reply before moving on. “You ok to walk there? Not far but I know you’re hurtin’.”   
  
Her back still aches but she’s not incapable so she agrees, ready to get out of this makeshift medical area and back to wherever they call home. Hoping that something on this field trip will trigger her memory.  
  
  


  
“Are we rich? We must be. What do we do?”  
  
Neither one of them looks rich far as she can tell, though she tries as a general rule not to be judgey but considering her husband, boyfriend…whoever he is, is covered in a thin layer of grime and grease and she’s dressed in an odd combination of hiking boots, cargo pants and a button down shirt she didn’t peg them for professionals. But this neighborhood he’s leading her through, in a weird criss cross sort of way, between houses and avoiding the streets, is filled with million dollar homes, manicured yards and solar panels.   
  
They have to be at least slightly rich to afford a home here, but he shakes his head as he leads the way up to a beautiful southern style home with a cute front porch, pushing the door open easily and heading through the halls.  
  
“Nah, we ain’t rich. Don’t really have jobs no more either.”  
  
He takes them to the kitchen, with it’s white cabinets and slick granite counters and her mouth drops open even while her confusion rises.

“So…we’re unemployed layabouts but we live here? Well call me crazy but unless we’re selling cocaine to the suburban soccer moms _'unemployed'_ doesn’t purchase a house like this.”  
  
She’s seated herself on one of the bar stools while he rifles around the kitchen, snorting at her comment while he flicks on the coffee maker and grabs a box of what looks like crackers from the cabinet, setting them down in front of her with a deadpan expression. “We're not drug dealers.”  
  
Carol mimics his look, sending it right back to him and propping her chin on one hand. “This is one of those too much information things, isn’t it? Fine, I’ll accept that we live in the lap of luxury without questioning how. For now.”  
  
The crackers are sort of stale but she picks at them anyway, not wanting to be rude and refuse, eating them slowly and trying to come to terms with how incredibly weird this all is. Seeing him brace both hands on the counter as he watches her.   
  
“I know this is hard. You’ll get there. Little bit at a time.”  
  
“I do have one other question.”   
  
“I’ll try to answer it.”  
  
This is one she really wants to know so she keeps her voice level and looks him right in the eye, hoping to cut off any preplanned responses and get only the truth. “How long have we been together?”  
  
If she thought the previous blushing he graced her with before was a sight then this display is really something to behold because he turns a shade of crimson faster than she can get all the words out. Looks down at the dark granite counter and back at her several times, fidgeting his fingers and looking like he’d rather be anywhere then right there with her. “We’re not. Ain’t like that.”  
  
Now she’s really confused because there’s no way this man isn’t someone important to her. All the signs point to yes but he’s telling her no and it just doesn’t compute. “Are you sure?”  
  
Daryl smirks a little, the very corner of his mouth turning up yet he still looks regretful in spite of it. “Pretty damn sure.”  
  
“I don’t understand…you were there when I woke up. You stayed with me. You’ve been explaining everything to me, you haven’t corrected all the _'wes'_ I’ve been using…you look at me like…like we’re something.”  
  
“We are somethin’ just not like that. We’re friends.”  
  
The coffee maker drips its last drop and he looks so relieved to busy himself with something that doesn’t involve explaining their non existent relationship to her that she almost laughs while he turns to pour them each a cup, lacing hers with the correct amount of sugar and powered creamer. She takes the cup he slides across the counter, holding it in both hands and regarding him thoughtfully, unwilling to drop this just yet even though she can tell he wishes she would.  
  
It may not be something he wants to talk about about, may not even be important in the grand scheme of things but it’s important to her in this moment. She needs all the pieces to the puzzle of her life that she can get.  
  
“Friends. Why?”  
  
“Why are we friends or why aren’t we anything more?”  
  
She rolls her eyes at his silly question, a clear attempt to stave off the inevitable. “The second one.”  
  
He huffs out a heavy breath, taking a quick drink of his own coffee and resting both forearms on the counter, spreading his hands wide for a moment before he finally gives in and tries his best to answer her. “I don’t know. Things are complicated now. The world is different. Shit like that, it’s not easy and it’s not priority one no more. I’m a fuckin’ mess and you’re…not a mess but you got your own shit to deal with too. You’re asking me to explain this to you and I don’t even know the answer myself. We just…haven’t gotten there yet.”  
  
“You make it sound like we’re stuck in some sic fi movie where the only thing that matters is escaping the aliens or finding the next box of stale crackers.”  
  
“See, now you’re gettin’ it. Minus the aliens. So far none of those.”  
  
 She remembers his last word on his relationship explanation then, and judging by the way he winced when he said it she thinks it was an unintentional slip and clearly she can’t let that go without a comment. “Yet, huh?”  
  
“Alright listen, this ain’t a damn romance novel. We need to worry about you gettin’ better. Focus on that right now and anything else after.”  
  
He’s faking irritation to cover how uncomfortable this whole conversation is making him and she thinks it might just be an adorable look and she relents, raising her hands in mock surrender, her voice holding a tease in it. “Ok ok. I’ll try not to grill you on frivolous nonsense any longer.” Then she has another thought, pauses a moment and decide to just ask it, her voice taking on an incredulous tone, her mouth curling up in a confused smile. “But we live here together?”  
  
“Yes we live here together, Jesus. In separate rooms. Across the damn hall from each other. You lock your door every night.”  
  
“You’ve been checking it?”  
  
She can’t help but laugh at his flustered expression, her smile growing wide and then he’s shaking his head at her and smiling too and it looks foreign on his face, like he hasn’t used it in quite a while but it suits him well enough that she wants to see it again. Judging by how impossibly easy he is to tease she thinks it won’t be too hard to make that happen.  
  
He spends the rest of the afternoon showing her the house and she putters around the space trying to familiarize herself with where everything is. Attempts to flick on the tv while he’s off in another room and finds a dead screen. Turns it off with a shrug and then the front door is opening and several people she’s never met before are walking inside. Heavily armed, one with a sword and the others with guns and she feels the panic rising in her throat erupt into a scream. Yelling for Daryl at the top of her lungs because they’re being robbed by a few really lazy, slow…wide eyed burglars.  
  
When he rushes down the steps she’s already backed into a far wall, staring at the others while they tell her it’s ok, that they know her and they live here too and how they really have no intention of decapitating her with that shiny sword but the stress of the entire day is enough that she barely hears them at all. Only the sound of Daryl shooing them out of the room and then the feel of his arm around her shoulders as he pulls her into his side is enough to sooth the panic.

 


	3. Chapter 3

He’s in way over his head here.   
  
Not only does he have no clue what to tell her and what to hold back, but their conversation in the kitchen knocked him for a loop. She’d been so certain they were together and if he’s being honest with himself he can see why.  
  
She isn’t wrong. He does look at her like she’s something to him because she is, but classifying that to himself, let alone speaking that out loud to her, is something he’s in no way prepared to do just yet. So he’d stumbled through a half assed explanation that he’d been worried she’d take as a rejection. She hadn’t though, that option never seemed to cross her mind. She just assumed that if she wasn’t with him there has to be another reason and verbalizing the reasons had been hard as fuck because when the words leave his lips they sound more like excuses.  
  
How does he tell her that he’s wanted her for years but is too much of a chicken shit to make it happen? How does he explain that right when he thought they were moving in that direction she began shutting him out and he didn’t know how to help her open up again? All around them people are making it work but somehow their obstacles pale in comparison to the ones he has with Carol.  
  
Talking about any of this with her feels like a trap and yet he doesn’t have it in him to lie to her.  
  
Fuck. He is doomed.  
  
Then Michonne, Rick, Maggie and Tara had blown through the door and scared the shit out of her and it’s not like he could blame her for that reaction because they walked right in like they owned the place, each one armed to the teeth. Which made him wonder what the hell else he needs to warn her about, aside from the obvious which he isn’t sure is a good idea to bring up just yet. Dragging her up to the tower and pointing out a walker while he puts an arrow through it’s brain isn’t the most gentle way to welcome someone into this life and the last thing he wants is to scare her even more.  
  
Daryl shakes his head at himself for even considering ways to soften this blow. This is Carol, the woman who single handedly saved them all from terminus and has taken out dozens of walkers with that shiny knuckle knife. A day ago she was the last person who needed protecting, would shrug it off should anyone even attempt it, and now…now she’s brand new and doe-eyed. Ripe for the picking.  
  
He needs to find Denise again before he goes back. Needs to ask her to lay this all out for him in a way he can understand so he doesn’t do more harm than good while trying to lead Carol through these minefields until she gets her memory back. If she gets it back.  
  
A cough to his left reminds him Rick is there next to him and brings him back to the present, to his next main objective which is to make sure all the walker bodies are at least out of sight within a one block radius of their house. He’d done his best to weave them around the worst areas when he was taking her home earlier and luckily she hadn’t seen any but he doesn’t want to have to explain why there’s dead people on the road. Not yet anyway.  
  
He’d left her with the others and after the initial shock of their entrance had worn off she seemed perfectly fine with staying there with them. Denise had apparently filled them in so he didn’t have to instruct them on proper Carol Handling Protocol, in which rule one is don’t talk about walkers and rule two is don’t let her outside the walls.  
  
They were chattering about what’s for dinner as he and Rick headed for the door, sticking to light topics and he’s grateful for that, but even so he hadn’t wanted to leave. Letting her out of his sight at all feels like he’s failing but unfortunately he has shit to do that he can’t avoid and the pile of bodies by the gate proves it.  
  
“How much we got left?”  
  
Rick gestures out to the pile in front of them, ready to be hauled further out and burned. “Just that one and some others a few streets over. Got most of ‘em out this morning, didn’t want to let it linger. Longer we wait the worse it’ll be.”  
  
They set about grabbing bodies and chucking them into the back of a waiting truck when Rick decides it’s a good time to bring up the elephant in the room. “Do we know how long that’s gonna last? With Carol?”  
  
“Dunno. Denise says she could get it back any time. Or it could take a while. For now…she’s seems ok?”  
  
There’s a question mark on the end of his sentence even though there shouldn’t be because he sure as fuck doesn’t really know himself. She seems fine, all things considered, in fact she’s handling the entire thing remarkably well but he can’t be sure.  
  
“Yeah, seems ok. Looked happy enough when we left. Was smiling at Maggie, haven’t seen her smile like that in a long time.”  
  
Daryl nods at his observation, knows how true a statement that is because he hasn’t seen her smile in a long time either and he misses it. It’s moments like that when this disaster feels more like a gift.  
  
“You know it was Morgan that did this right?”  
  
Rick sucks in a healthy breath of air between his teeth, averting his gaze slightly off to the side. “I was told. Talked to him about it already, he says it won’t happen again and I believe him but it ain’t right. Don’t know what the fuck else to do about him though and you seem to have taken care of the physical punishment already.”  
  
“He earned that broken nose. Fucker threw her into the concrete floor. Scrambled her brain. Could have killed her. That’s not even taking into account the fact that he was protectin’ one of them over us.”  
  
“What are you sayin’ I need to do? Because I don’t know. Can’t throw him outside the walls and he’s an asset when it comes to protecting this place.”  
  
Daryl snorts his disapproval. “An asset that leaves the enemy alive.”  
  
“That’s…a problem. I’ll give you that. Look, just gimme some time to figure this out. I know you’re upset and I am too. Don’t like what happened one bit but like I said…we need him. Especially now when we’re most vulnerable. With the wall half down.”  
  
Daryl sighs, huffing out a distressed breath and shrugging. Rick is right, much as it pains him to admit it. They do need Morgan to help defend this community, he only wishes he could trust him to do so and not put them in even more danger in the process. He is however, out of other options besides re-breaking his nose or tossing him to the walkers and he doesn’t think either of those ideas will get a green light.  
  
 “Just keep him the hell away from her.”  
  
Rick smirks as they toss the last body into the truck. “Don’t gotta worry about that. Think he’s learned his lesson.”  
  
“Need to spread the word to the people who know her too, tell ‘em what’s up and what not to say so we can keep this…easy for her. For now. Don’t need some well meaning fuckwit running off at the mouth about walkers and the end of the world and scaring the shit outta her.”  
  
Rick nods, agreeing easily enough as they watch the truck pull out and away. “I’ll let them know.”  
  
  
  
  
  
Daryl finds Denise an hour later, fiddling with supplies in the medical area. Her eyes light up when she sees him and she’s only too ready to field a hundred questions at him about Carol.  
  
“Hey, how is she? Do you need more meds? Have you checked out the bruising on her spine yet because if you haven’t I probably should by tomorrow and if it gets worse she’ll need something to reduce the inflammation. What’s wrong?”  
  
She stops abruptly when he doesn’t respond, standing there in the middle of the room with a confused expression on his face as she rattles off her words. “Nothin’s wrong, just…she’s fine. I think. Taking it all in stride, I guess? Haven’t looked at her back because we don’t make a habit of checking each other over shirtless.”  
  
She’s giving him a weird sort of sympathetic look now and he’s not sure he likes it but then she’s patting a chair and sitting next to it in the other one and he slumps down into the seat without hesitation.  
  
“What’s up? You look like you wanna talk about something.”  
  
He does want to talk but he doesn’t know how to start so he just launches into everything all at once, hoping she can make sense of this garbled mess. “I don’t know what I’m doin’. With her. I don’t know what to say and what not to say. What if I make it worse? What if I say the wrong the thing? What if I don’t tell her enough and it gets her killed? I need some instructions here.”  
  
“You’ve been steering clear of the big things? Walkers, apocalypse? That kinda stuff?”  
  
He nods his agreement and she looks relieved.  
  
“Good, that’s probably best for now. It’s only the first day and that’s a big, big jolt for someone that wasn’t a part of this world the night before. There might come a time when you have to tell her, but for now, let’s keep that to a minimum and who knows, maybe she wakes up tomorrow and she’s back to normal again.”  
  
Denise takes a breath, pondering her next words thoughtfully and he waits eagerly for them, ready to inhale whatever advice she has to give.  
  
“She trusts you already, I could tell when she woke up. That’s a good thing. She’s sort of like a baby duck right now and she’s imprinted on you, she’ll be inclined to take what you say as the truth.” She smiles at him before continuing. “No pressure.”  
  
He snorts at that comparison. “So she coulda imprinted on anyone? Thanks.”  
  
“No, that’s not what I mean. I think a part of her knows you even if her brain doesn’t yet. I was there too and you don’t see her hanging around here baby ducking me, right?”  
  
He sighs, unsure if this explanation is effective but either way he’s so fucking grateful to have a shrink here because if a situation ever called for one this is it. “The trustin' me is what I’m worried about. What the fuck do I tell her when she asks about her past…she’s got a question for everything and I don’t know how much is too much. Been tellin’ her you said not to overload her but I don’t know if that’s right. Do I just lay out everything I know or go little by little?”  
  
“Well you weren’t wrong, too much too soon can be overwhelming. Little by little is ok. Don’t offer things she doesn’t ask for unless it feels right at the time. Don’t try to replace her memory for her, you can’t do that. No one can. It has to come back on it’s own, but you can make it a little less scary until it does.”  
  
He nods, chewing on his bottom lip and thinking of how he should really get back and check on her again but then Denise is patting him on the knee and speaking soft words to him in a consoling tone and while he really doesn’t want any of that he soaks it up anyway because he’s stressed as fuck and any sort of reassurance is a welcome thing.  
  
“You’re doing fine. Don’t doubt yourself. She’s with the right person to help her through this. However, I’m gonna say something now and I don’t want you to take offense. I know this is a lot for you too, and if it’s too much she’s welcome to stay with me and Tara for a while, you don’t have to-”  
  
“No. Should be me. She’s not…too much. Could never be too much.”  
  
“Ok. See, I told you she was with the right person.”  
  
He rolls his eyes at that, getting the feeling that all of this is turning far too mushy for his liking and makes for the door before she can wrangle him back into the chair again. “Alright this is going chick flick real fast and I ain’t got time for that. Thanks for…you know.”  
  
Denise only nods, watching him awkwardly leave the room with a sad smile on her face and he thinks he might like her even if she’s soft as hell and seems to have a distorted view of how equipt he is to deal with this situation.  
  
He wants to believe she’s right. That he won’t royally fuck this up and make what’s already difficult ten times worse but he isn’t so sure just yet. Even so, there’s no chance he’s about to shove Carol off on someone else like she’s a burden. She isn’t. He’ll answer every damn question she has like he’s a walking encyclopedia, watch her like a hawk and be her ill prepared guide through this world and not regret a second of it.  
  
He’s also selfishly excited about the possibility of spending time with her. Those moments have been few and far between lately and the prospect of indulging in an excess of them is almost too good to be true. Feels wrong to think of it like that, she’s lost part of who she is and all he can do is be happy it gives him a chance to see more of her but he is weak and the feelings come unbidden, telling him to take what he can get and so he does.  
  
  
  
  
  
He finds her on the porch swing when he returns, the low light of dusk coating her features just enough to make her easily visible. Her legs are tucked under her and her arms crossed and when she sees him come up the steps he receives a brilliant smile, all teeth and eye squints and he hasn’t even said anything yet.  
  
“Honey, you’re home.”  
  
Her tone is teasing but light and he smiles back just enough that she sees it and leans against the railing a foot or so away from her. “Where’s the others?”  
  
“Michonne went to bed early and Tara and Maggie went home. I almost had to shove them out, they didn’t want to leave me alone but after I swore on a stack of bibles that I wouldn’t leave the walls and would just wait here until you got back they finally agreed. I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m so eager to die of the flu. No thank you.”  
  
“They care about you, they’re just worried.”  
  
She side eyes him a little, swinging a bit harder. “I know. They seem nice. It was…weird talking to them but then we made dinner and it was fine because we could talk about food. Everyone wants to feed me lately. I put a plate in the microwave for you, it’s some sort of casserole thing. Maggie says it’s my own recipe and apparently I kick ass at cooking because it’s really good.”  
  
He huffs out a laugh at that, she has no idea how good a cook she really is. “You do kick ass at cookin’. Thanks for savin’ me some.”  
  
She nods absently, her face thoughtful and he wants to prompt her a little, even though he’s not one to push, so he goes with his instincts this time and lets it happen. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”  
  
“Pointless things like how I should call my landlord and make sure he doesn’t give my apartment away. How someone needs to feed my goldfish. How I probably have a stack of mail waiting for me, only then I remember none of that matters anymore because the goldfish is dead and the apartment is long gone and my pile of bills is long overdue….or paid…I don’t know. Maybe I paid them. It all still feels like yesterday to me.”  
  
“What’d you name your goldfish?”  
  
She smiles a little, the corner of her mouth turning up. “Clyde.”  
  
His eyebrows shoot up in mock surprise. “Serious name.”  
  
“He was a serious fish.”  
  
The conversation lulls for a moment and he’s about to ask her if she wants to go back inside when she speaks again, her voice worried and low, her next question sending a knife through his gut. “Who’s Ed?”  
  
“Someone say something?”  
  
She nods, hugging her sweater closer and looking impossibly small on the large wooden swing.  
  
“We didn’t talk about much while you were gone but then I made some stupid remark about how maybe it’s a good thing to not have any of the bad memories in my brain from the last fifteen years and Maggie said I was better off never knowing Ed at all. But then she wouldn’t tell me who he was…none of them would. Just said they didn’t want to give me too much information and Maggie wouldn’t stop apologizing, but dammit I wanna know. I might never get any of this back and if that’s the case I have to start filling in all these blanks. Tell me, Daryl. Please. Who was he? Why am I better off?”  
  
He could strangle Maggie with the scarf her saw her wearing earlier. He doesn't want to explain this to her but he can’t deny her the truth either. She’s so desperate for information, waiting hopefully for him to give her something that makes sense and he’s powerless to resist. She’ll find out eventually and it’s better she hears it from him. He’s never been good with words but at least he can try to craft his answer so it doesn’t heap on unnecessary stress.  
  
“You were married to him. He got the flu, he didn’t make it. Wasn’t a good person…that’s why you’re better off.”  
  
The surprise on her face registers clearly, her eyes darting down to her empty ring finger and back up again. “I was married…and he wasn’t a good person. Why would I marry someone like that?”  
  
“I don’t know. You and I never talked about him. I met you soon after the illness started spreadin’ and you were still with him then, but I only knew him a real short time before he was gone. I’m not lyin’ here when I say Maggie was right. You are better off…don’t go thinking about mourning that asshole because he don’t deserve it.”  
  
Carol shakes her head, her earlier sadness lifting a little to make way for a half smirk at his asshole comment. “Tell me how you really feel.”  
  
“Best save that for another night.”  
  
She hums out a quiet sound, her eyes on him soft and approving and he has a hard time looking away. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”  
  
“Always.” He pauses a moment, trying to think of something to lighten the mood because while she’s not spiraling down into a pit of sadness yet she doesn’t look even remotely happy anymore and he so badly wants to see that lightness come back again. “You wanna take a walk tomorrow? Check out the rest of the place?”  
  
She brightens instantly at the prospect of a field trip. “Yes. Absolutely. I don’t know what to do with myself. Maybe soon I can start contributing somehow? What did I do here before?”  
  
“Um…mostly the cookin’. Watched Judith, Rick’s kid, a lot. We haven’t been here too long yet, everyone is still sorta finding their way.”  
  
She frowns at his explanation. “So I’m domestic is what you’re saying? How boring of me. I mean I’m sure they’re important jobs, people need to eat and babies need watching but…I don’t feel like the housewife type. I never have…never even planned on getting married but apparently I did so what the hell do I know. Maybe I am the housewife type. I already made a casserole today so step one of the transformation is complete.”  
  
He has to wonder how much of who she was had been wrapped up in survival mechanisms for living in an abusive marriage. How much of the domesticity she’s so very good at was a way to appease the man she feared? Then maybe it just stuck afterward, habit more than anything else, and when that version of her sunk into her soul and made a home there she let it happen. She has no idea that these are only a few of her many skills and he doesn’t think telling her she’s a great shot with a gun and can stab a walker straight through the eyeball into the brain like a pro is the best course of action at the moment.  
  
She’s looking at him with a slight pout and her tone was sassy enough that he has to resist the urge to laugh at her. Opts for a practical reply instead, hefting off the railing and gesturing for her to follow him inside for the night.  
  
“Ain’t gotta be domestic if you don’t wanna. We can find other things for you to do. Plenty of jobs around here, most of ‘em are dirty though.”  
  
He realizes his mistake the moment the words leave his mouth but for a moment she’s silent, both of them paused in front of the door, his hand on the knob and then she finally takes the bait.  
  
“The dirtier the better.”  
  
He walked right into that one and she smiles coyly at him while he ducks his head. “You do this often don’t you? Set ‘em up so I can knock ‘em down? Is this a thing for us?”  
  
“Oh it’s a thing, but I don’t set ‘em up on purpose. You’re just real good at knockin’ ‘em down.”  
  
She seems satisfied with that answer, brushing past him into the house and heading for the stairs and he gulps hard as she gives him her reply. “Even better.”  



	4. Chapter 4

Carol is up, showered and dressed at the crack of dawn. Having found a pair of jeans that mostly fit shoved far back into the closet and a plain blue t-shirt she suspects belongs to a teenage boy but she’s not complaining because she actually feels semi comfortable in her own skin now compared to whatever the hell she had on before. Previous Carol probably made do with what she had on hand which is practical but Current Carol isn’t going to be sporting white button down shirts if she can help it. What was she thinking? How did she ever hope to keep that clean?  
  
She’s kept the boots though, tucking her jeans into them and making her way down the steps to the kitchen. She’d struggled to sleep the night before, part of her afraid she’d lose even more time if she did and the other part trying desperately to let her dreams replace some of her memories. Trying only made it harder though and in addition to not remembering a damn thing, she’d lain awake staring at the ceiling for hours. Once she finally drifted off her mind was blank, not even a convoluted nonsense dream to show for it when she woke again.  
  
Maybe this walk she’s about to take with Daryl will trigger something, but at the very least it’ll be a chance to see more of the community, meet people she already knows and hopefully encourage them to stop looking at her like she’s carrying the plague. The few that stayed with her the night before had been nice enough but they’d steal glances in her direction every so often that unnerved her, almost as if they were looking right through her skin and trying to see inside. Trying to find the person she used to be. A natural reaction perhaps to seeing your friend lose part of her mind, but either way she’d been glad to see them go. Even if they did produce a decent casserole together.  
  
She’d wondered about that too while she was chasing sheep the night before. Racking her brain for what other skills she’s learned that she can’t remember acquiring. She wants to ask Daryl and at the very least she knows he’ll tell her the truth…after some well intentioned sugar coating and fidgeting. But helpful as he’s been she knows this can’t be easy on him either and she’s wary of asking too much, doesn’t want to chase him away by behaving like a toddler asking five hundred questions per hour until he can’t disappear fast enough.  
  
She’s in the kitchen making coffee when his footsteps fall heavy on the stairs and when she looks up it’s like a scene from a movie. He’s freshly showered and clean and she can tell this from several feet away because the last time she’d seen him he was two shades darker than he is right now. Her brows arch and the corners of her mouth tug up and he must have noticed her reaction because he ducks his head shyly as he approaches her, grabbing the cup she set out for him a moment ago. The more time she spends with him the more she can tell he really has no idea just how special he is. He seems completely ignorant of the fact and she isn’t sure how someone like that even exists.  
  
This time she’s the one to have made him coffee and she paid close attention last time to how he took it. Four creamer packets and three healthy scoops of sugar, enough that it tastes likes dessert which is exactly how she likes hers too and he gives a nod of approval when he takes a sip.  
  
“Coffee’s good.”  
  
She smiles a little, taking a drink of her own coffee and suddenly notices something else is different too. “You smell good.”  
  
It’s an innocent comment, an observation more than anything else but he really does blush now, looking slightly uncomfortable and she briefly feels bad, doesn’t want to drive him off with too many compliments because he’s clearly not used to them. Wonders if she complimented him before too. If she went out of her way to find good things here and there that she could bring to his attention and if he blushed then like he does now. Something tells her yes, that any incarnation of herself would recognize the person in front of her as someone who deserves and needs those little boosts. That she would simply keep at it, perhaps more low-key than she is now, until he accepted them.  
  
He shakes his head at her, his newly clean hair fluffing around him like a halo. “Stop.”  
  
“Peaches. I like it.”  
  
“You should, it’s yours. I sorta borrowed some. Was all that was in the bathroom.”  
  
She nods quickly, indicating she doesn’t mind at all because much as she liked what she saw the day before, she didn’t like all the dirt and crud on him. Wasn’t about to comment on it though and risk embarrassing him, especially not when he seems to care for her so much. Enough to let her attach herself to him like she is when he probably has a million other more important things to do. But this surprise is a welcome one and those peaches on his skin waft sweetly up her nose.  
  
“You’re welcome to my peaches any time.”  
  
“Jesus.” He nearly chokes on his coffee when he replies and she laughs. He’s far too fun to poke at and while she doesn’t want to go too far he doesn’t actually seem put off by her comments judging by the smile he’s attempting to hide as he stares at her from across the kitchen island. She can see it threatening to break through as he struggles to hold it in.  
  
A large part of him is responding to her flirtations even as he protests them and she’s pretty sure he likes it.  
  
“Hey, how’s your back? Denise said if the swellin’ is getting worse you might need some different meds for it.”  
  
Carol sighs at the change of subject. She’d been doing a decent job of forgetting about her back with the assistance of pain killers, but now that she’s aware of it again it aches. A low throb, dull but persistent. “Still hurts but I don’t think it’s actually worse. Maybe we can stop there while we’re out?”  
  
“Sounds good. You ready for this walk or what?”  
  
“Yes, lets go see the sights.”  
  
Once they finish the last of their coffee they’re off, exiting the house and making a quick right turn to wander slowly down the mostly empty streets. There’s the occasional person milling around a house and when they wave she waves back but that’s the extent of her interactions with anyone until a man jogs out of his garage to meet them, ignoring Daryl entirely to focus on her and she squints at him, curious about this sudden attention and waiting for him to explain what’s so urgent that he nearly ran them over in his haste to get there.  
  
“Carol! I was just about to come check on you. Rick told me what happened, it’s an awful shame. You feeling alright?”  
  
She nods. “Feel fine, do I know you? You’ll have to remind me if I do, the amnesia is a hassle like that.”  
  
“Oh, right. Sorry I should have done that first. I’m Tobin. We’ve been talking a lot recently, since you arrived here. We had some shooting lessons lined up. You were pretty excited to get your hands on a gun and test it out.”  
  
She casts a glance over to Daryl who’s expression is entirely blank and he shrugs at her, no help at all. “Well aren’t you sweet. I’m not sure I’m up to that now though. Thank you anyway.”  
  
She expects that to be the end of it, for him to take a subtle hint and go away because while she might be missing half her memory she isn’t blind and can still tell when someone’s attempting to flirt with her. His offer of shooting lessons could have been legitimate and innocent if he hadn’t been looking at her with a weird sort of desire across his face the entire time.  
  
He doesn’t take the hint though and just as she’s about to walk away he cuts in again, stopping their forward motion with his voice and giving her another, more heavily affected bedroom stare. “Maybe I can stop by soon and we can just talk instead? Might help trigger something. Maybe being with a familiar person, someone you know can…nudge your brain a little bit.”  
  
Carol tries to keep her gaze neutral but she’s rapidly approaching irritation and it's a hard task. She can’t seem to care anymore though because if what he says is true, that they’ve been talking recently…spending time together…that she may have encouraged it, then she’s already feeling like she has no clue who this version of herself is anymore because this man is not her type. He seems nice and maybe beggars can’t be choosers when the world is overtaken by the flu but while she stares back at him now she can’t feel even the slightest bit of attraction and surely that sort of thing is true regardless of what she remembers and what she doesn’t. She can’t have changed that much in fifteen years.  
  
The more she learns about herself the less sense she makes and with all these thoughts bubbling in her head she gives her final reply to Mr. Nice Guy.  
  
“You’re nice to offer but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Oh…you left your power drill on…it’s about to fall off the thing…”  She gestures absently to his open garage where he’s got a slab of wood across two saw horses and a power drill sliding along the flat surface heading for the ground. Tobin mutters out a soft curse, gives her a little nod and then he’s gone. She hopes for good, thought she isn’t sure he’ll give up so easily. Especially if she let him think it was a possibility before. Previous Carol didn’t make this easy for her.  
  
“What was that all about? Tell me I didn’t date that guy.” She keeps her tone light as she and Daryl approach another open garage, this one full of food, looking like a pantry.  
  
He snorts, shrugging again like he couldn't care less but she can tell he does from the way those shoulders slump just enough to be noticeable. “Dunno. You’re nice to everyone. Could just be that.”  
  
“Better just be that. Otherwise I feel like I wanna give myself a good talking too. Maybe a good shake. Just grab her by the shoulders and jostle her a little bit.”  
  
“Hey hey, you’re already shaken enough up there.” He stops in front of her, his hand reaching up to brush lightly across the side of her head, fingers running softly over her hair as he indicates what exactly has already been scrambled.  
  
“Fine, no more shaking. So how’d we find this place anyway?”  
  
He leads her into the pantry and she fingers the boxes and cans alongs the rows, mostly vegetables, some bagged rice, lots of beets and she wonders who the hell loves beets that much to have a whole shelf of them.  
  
“They found us. We spent some time on the road for a while. You, me, Rick, his kids, some of the others. Then someone from this place showed up and here we are.”  
  
She arches a brow, curious about this story. “They just let us move in here with them? That’s very generous. Sorta suspicious, but generous.”  
  
“Yeah we thought that too. At first. Hard to trust people these days. Thought it was a trap, but they’ve been legit and it’s been what we needed when we needed it the most. It’s turned out pretty good here.”  
  
He grabs a bag of coffee grounds from a shelf, indicating to a woman in the corner what he plans to take and she jots something down on a little pad of paper.  
  
“That’s Olivia, if you need something from the pantry let her know so she can record it. Keeps track of what everyone takes.”  
  
Carol hadn’t noticed her until then but she smiles warmly and the other woman returns it. Telling her she’s so glad to see her up and about and had been worried when she heard the news of her traumatic brain injury, which she phrases just like that and Carol can only smile back again and tell her thank you because she’s at a loss for other replies. Turns her attention back to Daryl and hopes to pick up their conversation again.  
  
“You sound surprised. Not the indoor cat type? Wanted to stay out in the wilderness and rough it?”  
  
“Yes. No. Maybe. It’s…I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. Was a big change at first but I’m trying here. We all are.”  
  
“Seems worth it.”  
  
He nods his agreement as they exit the pantry, him clutching his bag of coffee and her following closely by his side as they make their way over to where she assumes is the medical area. Then she spies a section of the wall down to their left and taps Daryl on the arm, pointing to it and trying not to look too distressed. “What happened?”  
  
“Came down the night you got knocked out. Just need to get the last section complete, shouldn’t take long.”  
  
She can see people working on it already and thinks he must be right because it’s half way to being closed up, the new boards mingling with the old ones and she wants to know what knocked them down, but more than that she wants to know if she was there when it happened.  
  
“Is that how I got hurt? Was I by the wall when it came down?”  
  
Daryl looks uncomfortable again, doing that thing he does when he isn’t sure how to answer her, chewing on his lower lip and he doesn’t reply again until they’re on the porch of their destination.  
  
“You weren’t there. You had a fight with another person. He and you argued and he did something he shouldn’t have done. But he ain’t gonna hurt you again, it’s taken care of. You don’t gotta worry about that.”  
  
She’s frowning at him, turning his explanation over and trying to make sense of it. “What did we argue about?”  
  
“That’s one of them things we might wanna let come back on it’s own. I know it’s gotta be frustrating, but you don’t have context for a lot of this stuff and I don’t wanna explain it wrong and you get the wrong idea. Just know that you were right and he was wrong and what he did wasn’t ok.”  
  
It’s more than frustrating, it’s maddening. She’s practically clawing at the back of her mind trying to force those memories back but they refuse to obey, leaving her blank as ever. She wants to question him until he tells her everything but tries to hold it in. He’s probably right, much as she hates to admit it. She can’t put this information into it’s proper place and might interpret his explanation as something it isn’t. She has enough stress to deal with without creating more for herself, so she sighs and nods, trying not to look too disappointed and likely failing.  
  
“Ok. It’s resolved though? You’re sure? I don’t have an open disagreement with someone that’s gonna come back and haunt me?”  
  
“I’m sure. It’s over and done.”  
  
“It wasn’t Tobin was it? I don’t get that vibe from him but I know nothing anymore.”  
  
Daryl snorts out a laugh at that, shaking his head and leading them toward the door. “Nah. That fucker wouldn’t be walking right now if it was him. He’s a douche but he’s harmless.”  
  
She can’t help but nudge his shoulder just a little bit with her own, giving him an amused smile. “Chivalry is not dead after all.”  
  
He scoffs at her comment. “Nah not me. You. You woulda ended him. Got no doubt about it. He wouldn’t have stood a chance.”  
  
She’s surprised at that response but she likes it too, feels a sudden rush of pride at his certainty that she could take out Tobin without breaking a sweat. Then the worry creeps back in when she wonders who the fuck else she would have picked a fight with that was so out of her league that she ended up in the situation she’s in now.  
  
  
  
  
  
Denise is only too happy to tend to her wounds when they arrive, encouraging her to sit on the bed and asking permission to lift the back of her shirt and assess the damage, which she gives easily. Daryl is in a chair in front of her, forearms on his knees as he watches them, concern evident on his face.  
  
“Not too bad, it’s still black and blue but the swelling isn’t any worse today. You got pretty lucky. Should continue to heal up on it’s own, but keep taking those pain meds until you don’t need ‘em anymore. Don’t be a hero.”  
  
Carol raises her hands in mock surrender. “No intention of being a hero, don’t worry. I like my drugs.”  
  
“Head still pounding too?”  
  
“No, that’s a lot better already. Which is weird right? Shouldn’t it be worse if it was bad enough to wipe out that much of my life?”  
  
Denise shrugs. “Not really, the brain is a weird thing. We don’t even fully understand how it works. You could have hit it the right way without much force and still gotten this result. It’s a good thing that it doesn’t hurt much anymore.”  
  
She’s moving over to Daryl next, giving him a matter of fact look and he rolls his eyes at her. “It’s fine.”  
  
Denise scowls at him. “You needed stitches, it’s not fine. And you better be taking those antibiotics too. Don’t need you getting an infection. Lemme see it.”  
  
He looks embarrassed for a moment, hesitant to reveal whatever wound he’s hiding but he finally agrees, unbuttoning his shirt and letting Denise tend to his shoulder and Carol can see the briefest hint of the angry flesh from where she sits a few feet away, red and raw and she hadn’t had any idea he was injured at all, let alone so badly.  
  
“What happened to you? I didn’t know you were hurt.”  
  
He waves her off, ready to brush his own injuries under the rug. “It’s nothin’. Had my own fight with someone not too long ago.”  
  
“Wow. We are a rowdy bunch, huh?”  
  
Denise cuts in a moment later, after having spread some sort of cream across the incision and gesturing for him to button back up. “He’ll be fine, it’ll heal but if you can make sure he takes those pills that would be great otherwise I’ll have to hold him down and pill him like I used to do with my cat.”  
  
“I’m takin’ the damn pills. I swear.”  
  
Carol smiles at his disgruntled look while he peers back and forth between the two women who are ready to team up against him for his own good.

They leave Denise shortly after with instructions to check back in tomorrow and then they’re headed home again and not a moment too soon because this little outing has taken it’s toll. Her back throbs and she’s tired even though it’s not noon yet. He must notice because he’s telling her to take a nap once they get inside and that’s the last thing on her agenda.  
  
“I don’t want to sleep my life away.”  
  
“You’ve had a hard couple days, ain’t sleepin’ your life away just to rest a bit.”  
  
She sighs, rolling her neck to stretch the muscles there. “Just for an hour. Don’t let me sleep all day, ok? You’ll wake me soon?”  
  
She realizes too late that she just assumed he’ll be hanging around the house while she naps, like he hasn’t got other responsibilities aside from staying with her but he agrees anyway, watching her head up the stairs toward the bedroom and not for the first time she wishes Previous Carol had made more of an effort with this one. It would be really nice to nap _with him_ instead of alone.  
  


 


	5. Chapter 5

Daryl is wide awake, watching the trees cast shadows on his bedroom ceiling when he hears the clink of dishes coming from downstairs. Could be anyone, he thinks. Rick walking around with a fussy baby, Michonne getting a cup of tea, they don’t exactly live in the quietest of houses so midnight sounds are nothing new to him but then it happens again and he get more curious. Tilts his head toward the noise and hears the ding of the microwave go off.  
  
He could really go for a tea himself. He’ll never admit it to anyone but those fruity teas that Michonne keeps tucked away in the far corner of a cabinet help him drift off when he’s having trouble sleeping. She never comments on the missing bags, even caught him one night shifting things around looking for some and told him exactly where they were with a smirk on her face but he still feels bad for pilfering them anyway. Keeps trying to find her more when he goes on runs, even making quick checks into specially stores that seem promising. He’s found plenty of chai and black tea but thus far nothing fruity. He keeps looking though, hoping someday he’ll hit the mother load.  
  
Daryl quietly leaves his bed, creeping down the stairs at a tip toe to keep from waking anyone else, intent on hitting up the kitchen right away but the moment he reaches the bottom step he hears something else, the faint but unmistakeable sound of sniffling. Someone is in the living room, sitting in the dark with only the low glow of the kitchen pantry light illuminating them. A streak of silver hair over the back of the sofa tells him who and he doesn’t hesitate to approach her, rounding the corner slowly but deliberately so he doesn’t scare her with his sudden appearance. He needn’t have worried because she clearly heard him coming, already wiping away the tears from her face with a closed fist and giving him an unconvincing half smile.   
  
“Did I wake you? I couldn’t sleep.”  
  
“Nah, was up anyway, was thinking about some tea too.” He gestures to her cup on the end table, swirls of steam rising up from the top but he doesn’t leave to make himself a cup, instead he lowers onto the sofa next to her and she instantly looks away, likely knowing what his next question will be and he doesn’t even have to ask it before she’s already giving him an answer.  
  
“I had a dream. It woke me up and then I couldn’t get back to sleep so I came down here.”  
  
“The dream’s whats got you upset?”  
  
Carol hesitates a moment before shaking her head, curling her arms around her middle and leaning into the sofa cushions. “I heard Rick talking when I passed his room. I didn’t mean to listen but the door was open a crack and he was telling Michonne that it’s better I don’t remember anything, that…if I never get back all the things I’ve done it’ll be for the best and I know he probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded but what if I’m not a good person anymore, Daryl?”   
  
She’s rapidly loosing her fight against the tears and they stream down her face one after the other while she wipes at them ineffectively. She’s trying like hell to rein in her sudden distress while waiting for his reply and all he can think is how he’d really love to punch Rick in the face. Knows it was an accident that she even heard, knows he wasn’t trying to be a dick but fuck if his words didn’t turn out to be the tipping point tonight for someone who was otherwise doing a damn good job of taking everything in stride. Daryl knows he can’t shelter her from everything, that even well meaning friends will eventually say or do things to confuse and upset her, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing he could just put her in a bubble where it’s safe.  
  
“You can’t take anything Rick says to heart. He tries but he’s a fucking hypocrite on a good day and he don’t got no business judging anyone for anything. He could have said that same sentence about any one of us if the situation fit.”  
  
She doesn’t believe him and he can tell because the tears only get worse and his fingers itch to wipe them away. She’s twirling the soft throw that lives on this particular piece of furniture between her fingers, watching her own thumb rub the fabric and purposely not looking at him.  
  
“It’s not just that, it’s everything. I don’t understand myself anymore. I’m picking fights with people that can knock me out cold, I married an asshole, I’m leading on men like Tobin when I know there’s nothing there, and now apparently I’ve done something that Rick thinks I’m better off never remembering again. It has to be something awful….I don’t feel like this person that I’ve become. I don’t know her anymore so maybe she did do something terrible.”  
  
This is worse than he realized, she’s been sitting down here thinking of all the ways she’s different, her imagination running wild with all the sins she could have committed and he sighs, reaching out a hand to close the foot of space between them and wiping a stray tear from her cheek. It seeps into the skin of his thumb and she lets him do it, leaning into his hand while her face creases and lip trembles and then he’s lifting his arm while she scoots under it, leaning against his side with her face pressed to his collarbone.   
  
This isn’t something they do with each other yet it’s easier than he ever thought it could be. Most of that likely due to how open and receptive she is to such things now, where before she’d have hidden those feelings so completely that he’d question if they were ever there at all. It’s easy for him to literally offer his shoulder to cry on when she so clearly wants him too. He could see the desire for this closeness written all over her face and he hadn’t realized how badly he wanted it too until he had her in his arms. Now he wonders how he ever went without.  
  
“Everything you’ve ever done has been for the good the group. You care about the people here, we’re family and you’d do anything to protect them. Don’t go lettin’ Rick make you feel like you’d done something wrong because you didn’t.”  
  
“Do you know what he’s talking about?”  
  
Her voice is small and soft and he barely hears her but he was really hoping she wouldn’t ask that question because he hates having to deny her the answers. “I think so.”  
  
“You won’t tell me though?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“But you know and you still think I’m a good person?”  
  
He leans his cheek against her hair, inhaling the scent of her coconut shampoo and running his hand down her arm while she curls it against his chest. “The best person I know.”  
  
“Ditto.” She’s sincere with her return compliment but he can’t help but take the opportunity to try and lighten the mood a little.  
  
“Well, you don’t know a lot of people…”  
  
He can feel a puff of air against his skin and see a sad smile on her face when he looks down and decides to consider this a win. “Funny.”   
  
If this signals the end of their moment she doesn’t move away yet and neither does he, just leans back into the cushions and she sinks in with him, curling her legs up onto the sofa and even though her face is wet where she rests it against him he doesn’t think she’s crying anymore so at least that’s something.  
  
“Sorry, I’m crying on you like a crazy person and I hardly have any idea why.”   
  
“Don’t be sorry, only been a couple days in. This is a lot for anyone even if they ain’t got Rick runnin' his mouth in the background.”  
  
“Don’t tell him I heard ok? I don’t want him to feel bad. He didn’t know I was there.”  
  
Daryl wants to protest that the last thing she should be doing is worrying about Rick’s feelings but he only nods gently, enough that she can feel the movement and then she’s trying to change the topic and he appreciates the effort but he has just as hard a time answering her next question as he did the first.  
  
“Tell me about you? I only know two days worth of things.”  
  
“Not much to tell really.”  
  
“What did you do before all this?”  
  
This one is easy though and he responds in the perfect deadpan tone. “Tour guide.”  
  
She lifts her head just enough to see his face, a soft smile playing on her lips. “Really?”  
  
“No. Not really.”  
  
He laughs a little then and she rolls her eyes, at his bad joke or at her own naivety he’s not sure. “I would have believed it. You missed your calling. Best tour guide I’ve ever had.”  
  
He doesn’t know what to say to that but it doesn’t matter much anymore when the air around them thickens and all he can think of is how close her lips are to his and how badly he wants to kiss them. He’s pretty certain she wants him too, the way she’s looking back at him with hooded eyes, pink lips slowly parting on their own...waiting for him. He nearly leans in right then and there but then his brain reminds him that this would be a bad, bad idea for multiple reasons and he looks away, breaking the moment and the disappointment registers clear across her face.   
  
He doesn’t want her to think he’s pulling away completely so he snugs her closer to his chest and she accepts the movement, leaning her cheek against his shoulder and exhaling heavily.   
  
“What’d you dream about?”  
  
“Oh, nothing really. It was sort of jumbled up but mostly a little blond girl. She was playing with someone, they were chasing her around and she was smiling. She looked happy. It was a good dream. Any of that sound familiar?”  
  
“Maybe. You’ve known more than one blond girl. Remember anything specific about her?”  
  
She shakes her head, frustration clear in her voice again. “No. It was like I was watching her through a window. I wasn’t close enough. Maybe it could be…”  
  
He supplies the name even though she doesn’t specifically ask for it. “Sophia.”  
  
“That was my grandmother’s name. I always said if I had a girl someday I’d name her Sophia. Maybe it’s her in my dream?”  
  
He hums out a noncommittal half grunt. “Maybe. Maybe not. Hard to tell yet. You dream about her again lemme know, ok?”  
  
She agrees, settling in along his side and he’s sure she must feel his heart thumping against his rib cage but she says nothing, only lays there wrapped in the safety of his arms, her body getting heavier as the seconds pass until he’s sure she’s fallen asleep again. His own mind whirls with possibilities though and sleep isn’t on the schedule for him. The chance that her memory is coming back through her dreams frightens and excites him at the same time. He isn’t sure what outcome he wants but he’s already making plans in his head to visit Denise first thing in the morning.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Now that he’s sitting in front of his impromptu therapist he doesn’t know which problem to bring up first. Decides to go with the least selfish one after a moment’s thought and blurts it out to her while she eats her morning cereal, flakes coated in water, which looks disgusting to him and the spoon pausing halfway from the bowl to her mouth at his words.  
  
“I think she’s remembering. She had a dream last night, might have been about her daughter. Not sure though.”  
  
“And that would have been a recovered memory?”  
  
“Yeah. Carol doesn’t remember her at all, least until last night.”  
  
Denise frowns around a mouthful of cereal, looking curious and far less concerned than he was hoping for because dammit someone else needs to be worried too.   
  
“That’s a good thing, right? Could be coming back, not unheard of for it to start through dreams.”  
  
“Maybe. I guess. I don’t know. Only a matter of time before she starts remembering all the bad shit too.”  
  
She gives him a sympathetic side eye at that comment. “Daryl, you can’t stop that. You know that, right? Her mind is gonna do it’s own thing regardless of whatever we do.”  
  
He knows she’s right but everything in him can’t help but think that Rick might have had a point. Not because she’s done terrible things but because she let it all affect her so deeply and he’d do anything to keep that from coming back all over over again. “I know.”  
  
“What else? Come on, you’ve got something you're stewing on. I can see it. Lay it on me.”  
  
He leans heavily on the kitchen island, sagging in the bar stool and shifting his gaze away from her. “I almost kissed her last night.”  
  
She completely stops eating her cereal then, her eyebrows raising up a few inches and her mouth forming a circle. “Oh. How do you feel about that?”  
  
“Like it’s a bad fucking idea because that ain’t her. I mean, it’s her…but it’s not. Feels like I’d have been cheating on her with herself which is seven kinds of fucked because we ain’t never been together in the first place.”  
  
“I can see why this would be stressful. Did she seem like she was all in for this almost kiss?”  
  
He nods, letting his head fall forward and running his hands over the back of his neck. His entire posture radiating defeat. “She did, that’s the problem.”  
  
“I don’t see why that’s a problem, fill me in.”  
  
“Cause like I said, she’s not herself. She’s…more…forward than she’s ever been.”  
  
Denise resumes her cereal consumption, clanking the spoon against the bowl and regarding him with a curious stare. “You’ve never gotten that vibe from her before?”  
  
He leans back into the high top chair, swiveling it as a way of fidgeting. “No, I have. I mean sorta? She’s done things that make me think maybe…but we live in that gray space, always fucking have. She ain’t never been this clear about it.”  
  
“And you’re afraid that if you take that step with her now she might regret it later because she made the choice without all the information?”  
  
He nods, relieved that she finally gets it and she smiles at him. “All right listen, she is herself. She may not remember some stuff, and some of that stuff might be important, but she isn’t an entirely different person. If she’s attracted to you now, if she wants you now, if she’s giving you clear signs that she’s ok with taking another step now, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t always there before too. You know as well as I do that this life makes shit harder than it needs to be. You’re just seeing a version of her that doesn’t have those obstacles.”  
  
He gives her an unconvinced look. “It’s been three days. Barely.”  
  
“For her mind, yes. For her heart it’s been…however long it’s been.”  
  
“So what are you sayin’?”  
  
Denise huffs out a frustrated sound, dumping her empty bowl into the sink and putting her hands on her hips. “I don’t know. I’m not telling you to throw her over your shoulder and cart her up the steps caveman style, but here’s a crazy idea, next time you two get all twitterpated why not talk to her about this? I know communication isn’t your thing but you’re making strides. You got this.”  
  
That is a crazy idea because the very thought of voicing his concerns to Carol frightens the shit out of him. It’s one thing to ask Denise, he already sees her in a professional sort of capacity and it’s easy to tell her personal things under the pretense of it being like a therapy session and lord knows he needs fucking therapy. Years of it probably. He’s not ignorant to that fact. So he can come here and lay his problems at her feet and beg for help and while it’s still awkward it’s not nearly as awkward as it would be to do the same with Carol.  
  
How does he tell her that he’s afraid she’ll wake up one day and regret anything they’ve done together since she lost her memory. That she’ll pull away all over again, or worse feel like he took advantage of her while she was unaware enough to reject him.   
  
Then he has another awful thought and can’t stop himself from voicing it. “How much of…her being this interested is…the baby duck thing?”  
  
“Shit. I never should have said that. Forget I ever said that ok? She’s not giving you go signals because she imprinted on you.”  
  
“Baby duck or not she’s gonna wake up one day and be her again and then what?”  
  
Denise laughs at him, actually laughs like this is some sort of joke and he’s confused and irritated on the spot. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying. She is herself. Even if she remembers everything, it’s unlikely that she’ll just wake up one morning and be exactly as she was. Is it possible? Sure. But it’s far more possible that what you see now is what you get and recovered memories will sort of…layer over that as they become accessible. Having said that, I barely know what I’m talking about here, I didn’t spend a lot of time on amnesia in school so don’t quote me. Bottom line is, you need to trust what your heart is telling you and more importantly you need to trust her.”  
  
Trust himself. Trust her. Easily said and more difficult to do. What he hears makes sense and he so badly wants to run with it and let this be a new start for them.   
  
Maybe next time she flirts with him he’ll flirt back. 

  
Maybe next time she wants him to kiss her he will. 


	6. Chapter 6

It’s the next day when Rick corners him in the watch tower and tells him Carol is a liability. That the longer she stays ignorant to the ways of the world the more of a danger she is to herself and others and while logically Daryl knows he’s right, it still seems far too soon to tell her about walkers, the virus and the fact that the world is fucked up beyond repair.   
  
She’s making steady progress in adjusting to her new life and he fears that learning something so horrific will only knock her back several steps. There’s also the possibility that she’ll be upset he lied to her. It’s been for her own good, but he’s twisted the truth just enough to try and keep it from crushing her and every time he has to withhold information or outright lie he feels like shit for it.   
  
Daryl leans his forearms over the railing, staring out at the emptiness beyond the wall and racking his brain for a way to avoid the inevitable. “Not even been a week yet. She might remember on her own. Already havin’ dreams about her girl.”   
  
Rick levels him with a firm stare and Daryl knows he’s not getting out of this so easily. “Or she might not. You know well as I do that all it’ll take is for her to end up outside these gates for whatever reason and she’s gone.”   
  
“She ain’t going outside the gates. Hasn’t tried once, already knows it’s a risk.”   
  
“So you’re gonna keep her prisoner here? That any better? What happens if we get overrun again and she can’t defend herself, or she gets someone else hurt or killed. She doesn’t know even the bare minimum to avoid that.”   
  
For all the truth in those words Daryl fights them anyway, lashing out even though he regrets his reply the moment it leaves his lips. “You’re wantin’ me to drag her up here, point out a few walkers and traumatize her?”   
  
“I’m worried about her. I want what’s best for her, even if you don’t believe that right now. I’m trying here. ”   
  
Daryl is instantly deflated, sagging against the wood of the rail in the tower. “I know.”   
  
Rick’s tone is softer than before when he tries again, hesitate but still assured. “It needs to happen and I think you know that. It’s what she would want. The Carol you knew last week wouldn’t want you sheltering her from this.”   
  
No, he thinks. She wouldn’t. The Carol of last week would tell him to grow some balls and show her how to survive in this world because either she learns or she dies. She’d already seen what happens to the weak and the soft, watched people she loves not make it due to their inability to adapt. Carol of last week would cringe at the thought of anyone thinking she couldn’t handle the truth, would probably resent him for even trying to keep it from her at all.    
  
She isn’t here though and he can’t base decisions on a version of her that doesn’t exist anymore. Still, he knows the longer he puts it off the harder it’ll be and if anything did happen to her as a result of her ignorance he’d never forgive himself. It was only days ago that the wall came down and the dead poured in and if she’d been in the same state she is now she wouldn’t have survived it.   
  
He’ll have to show her the truth and he’ll have to do it soon, before he looses his nerve and procrastinates again. Before another disaster hits them and catches her off guard and unprepared.    
  
If he doesn’t then someone else will. Either on purpose or by accident, a well intentioned slip of the tongue is all it would take and then she’s confused and afraid and they’ll be doing damage control instead of explaining it correctly the first time.    
  
He isn’t about to let anyone else take on this task. It should be him, that much he’s certain of.    
  
“Find Rosita and have her watch the tower for me?”   
  
“I didn’t mean right now, you don’t have to do it today…”   
  
Daryl shakes his head, suddenly certain of his decision as he practically shoos Rick off the tower and down the steps. “Need to get it over with, it’s better she knows. Don’t know what the fuck is gonna happen ten minutes from now, she’s gotta be prepared. You’re right.”   
  
  
  
Half an hour later he’s wandering through the woods with Abe, who spotted him about to leave the gates and decided to tag along, claiming he ‘ _had nothing better to do_ ’ and now they’re traipsing around together in search of a walker. Abe’s footsteps are heavy and loud and if they’d have been hunting real game they’d be fucked but in this case loud noise brings the game to them so maybe letting him follow wasn’t such a bad idea.    
  
Until he opens his mouth.    
  
“Seems like a hassle. All of this. Just take her out here like this and put a bolt through one of them fuckers and that’s it.”   
  
Daryl sighs. Not wanting to justify his actions to anyone, let alone the guy who’s clearly been making eyes at one woman while bedding another. “Then she freaks out and runs for her life and right into the arms of another walker? Sounds real safe.”   
  
“Safe. None of us are safe. None of us got any of this when we first found out. We either nutted up and survived or we didn’t. Bein’ too easy on her. For all we know she’s faking it anyway.”   
  
Daryl whirls on his heels in an instant. He was going to ignore the last outburst but that final comment was enough to force him to a stop, mouth open, staring in shock at the man before him. “First, just ‘cause you wouldn’t put no effort into makin’ this easier on Rosita should she get her brain scrambled, don’t mean the rest of us are assholes too. And second, she ain’t fakin’ it.”   
  
Abe looks properly chastised for all of five seconds and then he’s smirking and laughing and Daryl can’t even look at his face anymore, turns and walks away to continue their search while the other man’s voice carries behind him. “You got it bad. I didn’t know. I saw how you two was almost bumpin’ uglies after terminus, right there in the open with that full frontal hug but then nothin…spent more time apart after that. I stand corrected. Far be it for me to tell another man how to handle his woman.”   
  
The sound of a walker groaning and creaking in front of them keeps Daryl from having to reply and after a brief struggle they’re dragging it back toward the gates on a chain.    
  
This lucky bastard gets to be a participant in lesson one of how not to fucking die in the apocalypse.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Hey, you’re back early. I thought you’d be out all afternoon?”   
  
Carol had been heading for the porch swing when she opened the door and nearly ran face first into Daryl’s chest. He seemed to be just as surprised to see her, but he hadn’t moved at all, caught in some sort of limbo at the threshold as she stands there on the other side, frowning at him and seeing stress across his face clear as day.    
  
She’s instantly worried that something might have happened. Maybe someone got the flu or got injured on a supply run. Tara had mentioned to her over breakfast that morning that someone left earlier, saying it was normal and not to worry as she poured pancakes into perfect little circles.   
  
She’s about to ask him what the hell happened because he looks far too worried for it to be nothing but he cuts her off before she can, stepping back so she can cross the doorway and closing it behind her.    
  
“Rosita took over for me. You and I need to talk about a few things.”   
  
Her stomach flips into knots because no sentence that starts with  _'we need to talk'_  ever ends well. She thinks he might want to discuss what happened the night before. How she practically threw herself onto his lap and waited with baited breath for him to kiss her. She already feels badly enough for making him uncomfortable, they’ve only just met and she’s already trying to seduce him and that isn’t a thing she does on a regular basis but there’s something about him that makes her gravitate in his direction before she can stop herself. The pull is magnetic and unreasonable and encourages her to do stupid things like stare at his lips while he’s a hair’s breath away and imagine how they’d feel on her own.    
  
She isn’t about to actually bring this up herself though so she takes the easy way out with a general question. Bracing herself for the blow of Daryl letting her down easy and telling her she needs to keep to her own space bubble.   
  
“About what?”   
  
He shifts his stance a little, from one foot to the other and then she can see him gathering himself up, trying to be brave and she looks away, ready for the rejection she briefly saw last night to be voiced out loud.    
  
“When I told you the world was overrun by the flu…that wasn’t true. It’s something else and I thought that by not tellin’ you right away, it’d be easier…to let you…adjust first before I lay this out like I’m about to do but that ain’t the safe thing and the longer you don’t know the more dangerous it is.”   
  
Well that’s not at all what she was expecting to hear and she tilts her head at him, her brows knitting to together and her arms crossing. “If it’s not the flu what is it?”   
  
“A virus. Only it’s nothing like you ever seen before. You get it through a bite or a scratch from someone infected and once you got it that’s it, it’s deadly. There’s no cure. This virus, it’s taken out most of the population.”   
  
“That shouldn’t be too hard to avoid, right? Just don’t let people bite you? What am I missing here? Because when you say ‘ _most of the population_ ’ I’m not understanding how they all got infected and why everyone is biting and scratching each other to make that happen.”   
  
“Think I need to show you for you to understand. I’m gonna need you to trust me.”    
  
This confuses her even more but then he’s heading for the steps, holding out a hand for her and waiting until she takes it and she instantly reaches out, her own palm slipping into his easily while he wraps it in a firm grip.   
  
“I trust you.”    
  
That’s the thing, she does trust him. It defies all sense of rational thought because she’s barely known him a week but she trusts him in a way that she can’t quite define yet. She feels it more than she thinks it, like her body is taking over where her head can’t go yet and his hand in hers is a soothing presence while he leads her off the porch and toward the front gates.    
  
They approach slowly and she can see that the screen is open while the iron portion is still closed and someone is tied to the bars, struggling to get free and she instinctively walks faster, trying to get a better look but his hand in hers is secure and he keeps her next to him. The closer they get the harder his grip becomes and then she sees the person on the other side more clearly, sees the chain tying his neck to the gate and his flesh peeling off his face and she’s pretty sure he has no arms at all…like someone hacked them off. She doesn’t know what to do or say but her mouth is open and her eyes are wide and she can see Daryl watching her from the corner of her eye but it’s hard to break her gaze away from the sight in front of her to be sure.   
  
Part of her wants to help this man. He’s hurt and suffering and someone needs to unchain him and tend to his wounds but the other half of her screams loud as a siren that something isn’t right here and that there’s another layer to what she sees in front of her.    
  
“What…what is this? What happened to him?”   
  
“We call ‘em walkers. They’re infected with the virus. Got bit, passed on and came back like this. You get too close and he’ll bite you. If he had arms he’d scratch you. That’s all they do, try to get at you and if you let ‘em they’ll eat you alive. You can’t talk to ‘em, can’t reason with ‘em. They’re not people anymore.”   
  
Now she knows why he hasn’t let go of her hand at all, why his grip is vice like and he’s stopped them far enough away that there’s no chance she could reach the gate before he could pull her back.    
  
It seems impossible. His entire explanation sounds like something out of a horror movie but as she stands there and stares at the walker gnashing his teeth together through the bars, his guts practically hanging out of his abdomen and his arms cut clean off she knows there’s no way someone could survive that. Yet there he is, moving and growling like a living person.   
  
Daryl seems to be waiting for some kind of response from her but what the hell does she say to this? Her mouth opens though and words come out in a low whisper and there’s absolutely a few other four letter words she’d like to use but what she says instead is…“Oh shit.”   
  
That’s probably not the reaction he expected because he actually snorts out a small laugh next to her and she glares at him. “What? That’s a valid response. I’m processing this, ok?”   
  
He nods. “It’s a lot to process.”   
  
“You are not kidding. How do we…stop them? Can we stop them? What are you gonna do with him?”   
  
She’s still staring wide eyed at the walker with a weird sort of fascination and she can’t seem to look away. It’s like watching a car wreck on the highway, you have to slow down and gawk even though it’s sad and horrific.    
  
“Only way is to take out the brain. Stab ‘em, shoot ‘em. Gotta be the brain though.” He pauses to unsheathe a knife at his belt. “Stay here, don’t come too close.”   
  
She looks at him like he just said the most ridiculous thing in the world, her eyes narrowing and her mouth pursing, because honestly, why the hell would she want to get closer to that thing. He has the decency to look scolded for a moment even though she hadn’t said a word and then he’s dropping her hand and taking five quick strides toward the gate, stabbing the walker through the skull in one swift movement. It sags against the chain around it’s neck, unmoving and throughly dead.    
  
This entire situation is terrifying but she’s not afraid. Maybe it’s shock, she thinks. Maybe later this will all sink in and she’ll curl up into a ball and rock in the corner like someone who’s just seen a dead person trying to chew it’s way through steel bars, but right now she feels too many things at once to be as afraid as she should be.    
  
“I think I know why you didn’t tell me this right away. It’s…unbelievable. But there it is…”   
  
He’s putting his knife away again after whipping the blood off with a red rag from his back pocket, stopping in front of her with a regretful look on his face and she isn’t sure why because far as she’s concerned he’s done nothing but go out of his way to keep her safe when she’d been so woefully uninformed of the dangers she faced.   
  
“I didn’t wanna lie to you.”   
  
Well, there’s that. She supposes he did in fact lie to her but this specific thing makes sense to hold back at first. She’s more annoyed by the way he withholds information from her when she asks for it, even if she understands why he does, even if she knows he’s probably right. But this time she can’t find it in her to be even slightly irritated. “It’s ok. You’re telling me now. Besides, I didn’t even know where I was when I woke up, not sure showing me this right off the bat would have gone over so well.”   
  
He looks relieved and she gives him a small smile in spite of the situation. It feels wrong when there’s a dead person only a few feet away from them but she does it anyway.   
  
“You understand how serious this is right? You’re not gonna go out there alone?”   
  
“I understand. I won’t go out there. You’re not going out either right?”   
  
He smiles back then, just a little but it feels more placating than affectionate. “Not right now. Staying here for a while.”   
  
She doesn’t like the sound of that at all because it sounds like he’s leaving eventually and she can’t imagine that surviving out there is easy. Then she remembers that he already has. He’s already survived out there, probably faced situations she can’t imagine right now and come out the other side alive and kicking and her worry for him is likely ill placed, but dammit she feels it anyway. Wants to cocoon him inside the walls much like he’s been doing for her.   
  
Daryl gestures for Rosita in the tower to come back down and then she’s unlocking the chain and closing the screen to the gate, giving her a sympathetic look as she walks by again and Carol appreciates the intent but she doesn’t want sympathy.    
  
If everyone else can make it this far so can she. She already has.   
  
When they start walking back again, away from her gruesome lesson of the day she holds out her hand for Daryl without thinking. Is about to pull it back again when she realizes they weren’t actually holding hands just for the hell of it before, that he only did it to keep her safe but then he’s reaching for her and sliding his fingers through her own and far as she knows there’s no walkers back at the house so this time it’s only because he wants too.    
  
She doesn’t know him that well yet but feels like this might be a challenging thing for him, especially out in the open where anyone can see. Has nothing much to base that observation on really, he’s been affectionate and open with her but she can’t shake the notion that this is out of his comfort zone. But here he is trying anyway. For her.   
  
“How…infested is it here?”   
  
“It’s not too bad but it varies. Get hordes in sometimes. It’s gonna be different everywhere and it’s never gonna stay the same for long. These things keep moving, they’ll walk and walk until they find something…someone to eat. Cover a lot of ground.”   
  
“And it’s everywhere? We’re sure?”   
  
He nods. “Yeah. We ain’t been everywhere but the whole country shut down and there’s no doubt that it spread. There’s more of them than us now. That’s not all either.”   
  
They continue their journey down the well maintained streets, taking the long way around back the their house and she side eyes him.   
  
“If someone dies, even if they ain’t been bit they’ll turn. You need to get away before that happens or stab the brain before they do. It’s already in all of us. Dormant.”   
  
That information is like a kick to the gut. More so than actually seeing a walker for the first time. Knowing the virus is already in her, that she has no hope of escaping it even if she does avoid a bite and that she better pray someone is around when she finally kicks the bucket or she’ll become a walker too is enough to render her speechless. It’s almost too much to process and she thinks she wants to forget any of this ever happened and just go back to being blissfully unaware again but then rational thought takes over and she knows how foolish that wish is.    
  
His hand in hers squeezes just a little, bringing her back to the present and she doesn’t know what to say so she says nothing. Just nods enough so he knows she heard him and leans into his shoulder, letting go of his hand so she can curl her arm through his elbow. She’s needy right now and it almost makes her cringe with how pathetic it must seem, but if he minds he doesn’t say. Just lets her lean on him while she clutches his bicep.   
  
They don't say anything else for the rest of the walk back and then she suddenly has a hundred more questions for him that she swallows down. There will be time for that later, she thinks. Doesn't question his actions when he leads them back to the swing and sags into it and then they're sitting there togther, leaning into each other and swinging softly in the cool evening air while she struggles to come to terms with how different the world is now compared to when she woke up that morning.


	7. Chapter 7

Carol thinks she might be losing her mind. Pacing and back and forth in front of Denise while the other woman tracks her from her spot across the room.    
  
“This isn’t normal. It can’t be happening. I’m losing it…I must be, right? Whatever happened to my brain when I got knocked out is making me hallucinate shit like dead people trying to eat live people.”   
  
She glances at Denise who tilts her head and is about to respond but Carol has too many thoughts to hear it right now so she keeps going instead. “I mean, what the fuck, right? What. The. Fuck. He can’t be right because none of it makes sense and he’s a sweet guy but holy shit he might be cracked too because who just stabs someone in the head like he did? Right in front of me too? Like it was nothing?”   
  
She can see Denise raising a finger as if to interject but she’s on a roll now and there’s no stopping her. “For all I know this is a cult. Is it? Is this a heaven’s gate thing that I got sucked into somehow and now you’re all trying to lure me back into the fold so you can make me drink kool-aid spiked with cyanid? Make me think the world is ending so I’ll feel pretty good about tilting that cup back like it’s the only way out?”   
  
She’s still pacing the room, nearly frantic at this point, waving her hands wildly in the air in time with her words, wondering why the hell Denise isn’t helping whatsoever because that’s her job here, to talk some sense into her and all she’s doing right now is biting her lip while Carol wears a rut into the floor.   
  
“He didn’t seem like he was lying…he seemed like he believed it. So if it’s not a cult…and I’m not ruling that out right now even though most of you seem sane…aside from the one with the stick, he’s not quite right, but that’s beside the point. What I don’t understand is how this is even a thing that’s happening. Dead people. But not. They’re gone but then they’re back? And what if they get in here? Can they get in here?”   
  
Denise finally leaves her chair, crossing the room to grab a cup and filling it at the sink before heading in her direction but she can’t be concerned with that at the moment because there’s dead people outside those walls and Denise seems one hundred percent fine with it and far as she knows she’s the only one losing her mind.   
  
“What if they’re not really beyond help? Do we know that for sure? How can we be certain that they can’t be cured? How can we be certain that it’s everywhere? Daryl even said you haven’t been everywhere so maybe it’s ok in other places and we’re just stuck in the worst part?”   
  
She might be close to hyperventilating at this point, sucking in short lungfuls of air at rapid pace that still don’t feel like enough. Then Denise’s hand is on her shoulder, pushing her gently toward a chair and keeping the room from tilting on it’s axis. She slumps into the hard plastic seat, feeling it dig into her tailbone and it’s not a bad thing because she needs something to ground her right now and pain does the trick. Denise hands her the glass, holding it out innocently enough but Carol squints at it, getting an amused snort in return.   
  
“It’s not kool-aid. I promise.”   
  
She supposes she deserved that comment and takes the glass, which turns out to be water, chugging a fourth of it down before putting the rest on a nearby table and cradling her head in her hands. “Make this make sense. Tell me it’s not true.”   
  
Denise sighs and sinks into the chair across from her. “I can’t do that. I wish I could. It sounds like Daryl did his best to explain the ins and outs for you. He’s not wrong, everything he told you was the truth. The reason the rest of us aren’t freaking out is because we’re used to it by now, which sounds weird, I know, but it’s been years for us. You said you were…ok with this yesterday. What changed?”   
  
What changed. That’s the question she isn’t sure there’s an answer for aside from the fact that she went to bed the night before feeling like it was a lot to handle but she was fine, and then she woke up certain that everything was fucked and there was no way her life had amounted to surviving some sort of virus ridden apocalypse.    
  
“I don’t even know…it was a shock at first but I didn’t…feel much. Or maybe I felt too much to feel one thing? I can’t be sure. I just know that I absolutely was not losing my mind any more that usual last night and then this morning it’s all just wrong.”   
  
“Sounds like a delayed reaction, which actually isn’t that uncommon, especially in moments of high stress. Survival mechanisms sort of kick in and keep us calm in the face of a crisis so we can work through it and then once the brain has time to sort through it all you start to react. And you are definitely reacting.”   
  
“You think?”   
  
Denise gives her a half smile, patting her knee and looking far too calm considering their entire situation. “Well good news is you’re not in the middle of cult. Bad news is, the world has in fact gone to shit and the dead do walk the earth. So…not sure the cult thing would have actually been worse. Now that I think about it I might choose cult if I could. Sorry, that’s not helping. Have you talked to Daryl about this?”   
  
She shakes her head, sitting back and crossing her legs, folding her arms over her middle and resisting the urge to rock in a chair that’s not meant to rock at all. “No, I didn’t want to bother him with it. He’s done more than enough to try and help me deal with this and me having a literal fit is only going to stress him. I don’t want to be more of a burden than I already am.”   
  
“I think you know that he doesn’t see you like that.”   
  
She nods, she does know. Much as she may feel like a burden she doesn’t actually think Daryl would consider her one, and he certainly has plenty of reasons to do so. Still, when she woke up that morning, staring at the white ceiling and sucking in harsh breaths, on the tail end of a weird nightmare and suddenly feeling like nothing she knew about the world was right anymore the first thing she wanted to do was cross the hall and find him. Crawl into his bed and curl her body around him and let him soothe away the panic that coiled in her gut.    
  
Which is exactly why she didn’t do that. It’s not fair to him to put all her emotional distress at his feet and then also expect him to comfort her too, physically no less. She doesn’t think they do that with each other.   
  
So she forced herself to lay in bed for another hour, until light filtered in through the blinds and then she’d showered, dressed, ate a stale granola bar and headed straight to Denise. The only other person she felt comfortable enough venting her worries too.    
  
“I do, but I don’t think he can help me fix this either.”   
  
“What do you think would fix it? Considering that  _‘fixing’_  any of this is going to be pretty relative.”   
  
Carol ponders this a moment, isn’t entirely sure at all but takes a stab anyway. “Maybe feeling like I had more control over…something. ”   
  
“That’s a good point. Feeling like you have no control over your situation can add to the stress….you know what might be a good idea? Rosita is giving a class, sort of, where she’s showing some of the people here that don’t have experience with weapons how to use them. How to defend themselves. How to stab a walker. That sort of thing. You could have Daryl teach you, but if you don’t want to ask him then this could be step one of getting back a little control? Unless you have some memories that are relevant in that area?”   
  
“No. Nothing. I was an art history major. Useless choice. Didn’t exactly spend my free time stabbing anything with a knife unless it came from my fridge.”   
  
Denise smiles, spreading her hands a little and looking satisfied with her suggestion. “Well there you go. This is a thing you can do. Just up to you to decide how to do it. If you wanna handle it on your own or ask Daryl to help you instead.”   
  
She likes the idea of learning how to defend herself, how to pull her own weight in this community and not need Daryl to come to her rescue should something happen but she doesn’t have a clue how she used to be before all this…clearly she doesn’t fail at survival because she’s still alive, but was that mostly luck or was she actually good at this?    
  
It would be easier to ask Daryl to help her in private rather than risk getting odd looks from people she knows, expecting her to be one way and then she can’t deliver, but maybe this time she needs to be brave and just accept that she’s not that person anymore. Suck it up and take a fucking class with everyone else and risk her friends and peers side eyeing her the entire time. If weird looks are the worst thing she has to worry about right now then she’s still doing pretty damn good.   
  
“Ok. You’re right. Doing something other than sitting here stewing over this clusterfuck I’ve woken up in might help.”   
  
“That’s the spirit!”   
  
She doesn’t feel quite so worked up anymore, having ranted as much as she can and found a relative solution to her current problem but now that she’s stationary and calming she remembers the nightmare she had earlier that morning and how she’d wanted to address it with Denise.   
  
“I had a dream last night. Well, this is the second one. First time was of a girl but it was a good dream..I think? This one was different, maybe you can help me make some sense of it?”   
  
Denise nods. “Hit me with it.”   
  
“This is gonna sound really twisted so don’t judge my subconscious but I was watching people being burned. Just standing there in front of their bodies and I could smell it, this awful charring smell just ran right up my nose, even after I woke up it was there. It wasn’t very detailed, I don’t remember anything about them or why I was there, or why they were burning but I know I wasn’t afraid of the fire….or for myself….I was sad? Sad seems like the wrong word…”   
  
“And you think this is a memory?”   
  
“Maybe. I’m not sure. Could be just a random nightmare? Not everything is a memory right?”   
  
“It’s possible. I’d say if it doesn’t happen again, or if you don't remember more about that situation it might be a dream that doesn’t mean anything. Like you said, not every dream you have will be a memory. Wait and see what happens. Or, talk to Daryl about it and see if he knows anything.”   
  
She huffs, not looking convinced in the slightest. “You make it sound perfectly fine for me to constantly hound him for answers.”   
  
“It is fine. Do it. He won’t mind, in fact I can guarantee that if he’s not talking to you he wishes he was.”   
  
She raises a brow at that but doesn’t question it further. “Maybe.”   
  
  
  
  
Carol leaves Denise not long after, intent on setting up a weapons lesson with Rosita and cornering Daryl later to ask him about her dream when she’s nearly run over on her way home by Tobin, who once again flies out of his open garage to fall in step with her as she winds through the well maintained streets to her house.   
  
“Good to see you out and about, how have you been these past few days?”   
  
She gives him a tight lipped smile, not slowing her pace at all but his longer legs make it easy for him to keep up. “So far so good. How’s your…thing? Whatever you were making before? With the wood?”   
  
“Oh, all done. Was putting together some supports for a project. Got it all stained up too with a real nice finish.”   
  
“Sounds nice.” She can see her house coming into view, closer and closer and she speeds up just a little more at the sight of her porch.    
  
“You should come by soon, I can show it to you.”   
  
This one does not quit, she thinks. He is however, kind enough and harmless and she doesn’t want to be rude to him, just wants to get back inside her house and hibernate for the rest of the day where men in plaid shirts can’t challenge her to a power walking contest.   
  
“I’m allergic to newly cut wood. I’m sure it’s turning out great though, see you later…”   
  
She gives him a genuine smile and climbs the steps to her porch, practically hurling herself through the door and it takes everything she has not to throw it closed behind her but she isn’t that impolite and she stops to give him a neutral wave while the front door closes at a reasonable speed, locking it securely behind her.   
  
At first the house seems empty but she quickly hears baby sounds coming from the kitchen. Cooing and giggling and when she rounds the corner she sees Daryl holding Judith, bouncing the baby on his hip while he eats something from a bowl with his other hand, stopping every few seconds to hand a piece to the baby who takes it and clumsily puts it in her mouth. It’s an unexpected yet adorable image and she can’t help but smile warmly at them as she approaches, sliding onto a bar stool on the other side of the island and getting a nod of greeting from Daryl.   
  
“What are you two up to?”   
  
Daryl takes another piece of what she now sees are goldfish from the bowl, sliding it over to her after he feeds one to Judith. “Came in from workin’ on the wall for lunch and got wrangled into baby duty. Me and Judith here are fishin’.”   
  
She smirks at that, instantly amused. “Oh really? Catch anything yet?”   
  
He nods, his face serious as he regards the baby. “Yeah we did. Every damn time too. Keep catchin’ fish, don’t we?”   
  
The baby reaches out for another orange goldfish and Daryl obliges her, popping a tiny fish into her chubby hands and she erupts into a series of unrestrained giggles, laughing from her gut at nothing in particular and it must be impossible to watch a baby laugh so hard and not react because Daryl shakes his head and loses his battle at fighting a wide smile, the first one she’s seen from him that resembles a toothpaste commercial and then she’s smiling right along with him.   
  
The baby suddenly seems to notice she’s there, reaching both hands out in her direction and Carol balks, her smile fading and uncertainty creeping in. This baby knows her, that much is clear but she isn’t even sure if she’s good with kids. Is hesitant to try and risk doing something that causes those giggles to turn into wails instead.    
  
“You want her?”   
  
Daryl is sliding the baby across the granite counter on her well padded, diaper clad bottom and Carol has no choice but to take her when she reaches the other side. Hefting her into her lap while the child stares her right in the face with a curious look. Carol seems to have passed the test well enough because Judith concerns herself with the bowl of fish again soon after, leaning against Carol as she noisily chews one.   
  
“She knows me right? Seems like she does.”   
  
“You and her spent a lot of time together.”   
  
Daryl leans his forearms on the counter, watching them as she feeds the baby fish after fish and while she had wanted to ask him about her dream before, now all she can think of is Sophia. Feels bad bringing that topic up considering how hard it was for him to discuss it before, but she can’t hold her thoughts in either and they spill out.   
  
“It’s strange to think I had one. I keep thinking I’ll remember her and then I don’t and it’s so frustrating. I don’t know anything about her, I don’t know what she looked like. Not for sure.”   
  
“Blonde hair and brown eyes. She was real sweet, loved her momma.” He pauses to point to the hair ties around her wrist. “Those are hers. You never take ‘em off. It’s the only thing you have now.”   
  
Carol fingers the ties, turning them in circles and trying to rip a memory from the deep recess of her mind only to end up denied it. “How did she die? I’m so sorry to ask you Daryl, I know it’s hard but I need to know. Was she infected?”   
  
He nods sadly, his eyes downcast and his hands fiddling with a single goldfish. Confirming her worst fear thus far, that her own child was ravaged by something so awful.   
  
“”Where was I? Why wasn’t watching her? Why didn’t I stop it?”   
  
“You were watching her. You tried, we all tried. No one could stop it. You were a good mother, don’t go doubtin’ that.”   
  
He’s nothing if not honest and she believes that he believes it, but it’s difficult to avoid running a hundred scenarios through her head, wondering how it’s possible for a mother to let her own child succumb to an illness so deadly. She feels an all purpose type of guilt that encompasses the entire situation instead of a specific action. All she knows is that her daughter is gone and she’s still alive and there’s something inherently wrong with that picture on so many levels, but the ability to make it right is out of her grasp and without any memories to help put the pieces together she’s forced to take what he says as the truth.    
  
That she tried, that everyone did. That she was a good mother.    
  
It’s almost enough to help her push the ache of uncertainty aside, at least for now and focus instead on the baby in her lap. Smiling up at her with red cheeks and an innocent face and in that moment Carol thinks she’d do anything to protect this child that isn’t hers. She wasn’t able to keep her own girl alive but maybe she can help keep this one safe.   
  
She looks up to see her own guilt reflecting back at her in Daryl’s eyes. She doesn’t know why but she can tell he carries quite a bit of it for her daughter. That this weighs on him heavily enough that any conversation about it hallows out his expression and makes an apology hover on his lips.    
  
“I don’t know what happened, not really, but I know that you did everything you could. _I feel it._  I’m sure that I felt it before too. You don’t want me feeling guilty about this then you can’t either. I won’t have it.”   
  
He ducks his head, nodding at her but still looking regretful and she reaches out across the counter to lay her hand over his, letting her thumb stroke over his knuckles and he doesn’t pull away even though she can tell he might want too.    
  
The empty bowl of goldfish in front of them prompts her to try and lighten the mood a little. They’re suddenly stuck in this crater of despair and she’s the one who drug them down there with her endless questions. Now it’s up to her to dig them back out again.   
  
“How about we make something for lunch that’s not orange?”   
  
“Like what?”   
  
She shrugs. “I don’t know, lets raid the cabinets and see what we have. Between the three of us we should be able to make this happen. The two of you can compensate for my lackluster cooking skills.”   
  
Daryl snorts at her comment, regarding Judith with a matter of fact tone. “If she’s expectin’ me to cook anything but wild game and have it come out edible we are fucked.”   
  
“Daryl! Don’t curse at the baby!”   
  
She makes a dramatic motion to cover innocent little ears with both hands and Daryl laughs. “She don’t know the difference.”   
  
“You say that now but watch her first word be  _‘fuck’_ . Rick will be real pleased with that.”   
  
“Rick might not like it, but I’d be so proud.”   
  
Carol shakes her head, barely containing the smile that threatens to break through as she places the baby in a nearby high chair and sets about searching for ingredients to make a lunch slash dinner combination for them and the others.    
  
The weight of the morning has lifted and her nightmare is long forgotten by the time they settle on a dish and he haphazardly flicks a dusting of flour at her, the sprinkles falling lightly on her face and her eyes blaze at the obvious challenge.    
  
They spend the next few minutes wasting precious resources and she has no regrets.


	8. Chapter 8

It’s three days later when it happens. Catching him completely off guard and making him question everything he knows about himself. About them.

He’s clad in nothing but a towel hanging low on his hips, in his room searching for clothes after a shower when Carol bursts through the door like they have no boundaries between them whatsoever. Her eyes are bright and her smile wide and she’s practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, completely unconcerned with his current state of undress as she approaches him.

“I killed a walker. I just…stabbed it. Right in the eyeball, like I’ve been doing it forever. How wild is that?”

That’s when Daryl forgets his own lack of clothing and mentally springs forward from embarrassed and confused to worried as shit because there’s no way she could have killed a walker unless she went outside the walls. Far as he knows she’d been having a one on one lesson with Rosita that afternoon. Learning things like which end of the gun shoots out the bullets and how not to fall on your own knife and basic super simple shit like that and they were most certainly not going on a field trip too.

“How the hell did that happen? Did you go out there?”

He can’t control the slight hint of rage in his voice that’s born of worry and fear. All he can think of is what could have happened if she’d made a mistake and those what ifs flood his mind in an instant. Carol isn’t swayed by his tone though and he think he might be able to see her vibrating with adrenaline right in front of him. She’s proud of herself and he’s raining on her good mood but the mental image of her torn to shreds is too possible a thing at the moment and he can’t unsee it just yet.

“I was practicing with Rosita, knives and guns and whatnot, like we planned and it all just sort of…happened. Like muscle memory? I don’t know, but I picked up a gun, loaded it and fired right into the target without even thinking about it. My hands just…did it. On their own. Then she said we should go outside the walls and find a walker…to see if I reacted the same way and I did. I did. It was coming at me and I was so afraid, I thought I was gonna die and I almost couldn’t move but then I did it. Knife through the eye. It’s squishier than I thought it would be. I guess my muscles remember more than my brain does.”

“Jesus, she shouldn't have taken you out there. It ain't safe. What the fuck was she thinkin’?” 

He’s so angry at Rosita for putting Carol in a situation she’s not used too. For literally putting her life on the line to test out a theory. He has half a mind to stalk over there right now and tell her how fucking stupid that was and that she better be real glad Carol is still in one piece right now, but she’s still talking in front of him, her happy mood not dampened by his anger one bit.

“No, don’t you see it’s a good thing. Now I know that a part of me still remembers who I used to be. It’s better this way, she was right.”

“And if she wasn’t? If you didn’t get no flashes of muscle memory and that walker ate you alive?”

Carol sighs, leveling him with a look he can’t quite describe yet. “It didn’t though. She wasn’t far, could have helped if I needed it but I didn’t. I’m still here, Daryl…and the first thing I wanted to do afterward is come and tell you.”

He’s still not convinced but she’s difficult to be upset with when she’s looking at him like a tiger who’s spied an antelope and that’s exactly what she’s doing, her expression going slightly feral in the span of a few breaths and his own reply is low and throaty even thought he’s given it no permission to do so. “Why’s that?”

“Everyone reacts to life and death situations differently. Some people, they shut down and others feel more alive than ever. Right now, in this moment, I’m the second one. I feel really, really good right now, Daryl and I wanna share that with you.”

She’s somehow stalked across the room toward him before he realized she moved at all, ending up right in his space and he's suddenly all too aware of his near nakedness and the fact that she’s positively radiating heat and desire and that’s when he knows she came here for one specific reason. 

To work off her adrenaline high with him.

He gulps hard, running through all the valid reasons why he knows they shouldn’t do this but then she’s got her hands on his chest, narrowing her eyes at him and pushing gently until he’s seated on the bed behind him with a lap full of Carol, who’s straddled him in one swift move and wrapped her arms securely around his neck. 

He doesn’t know what the fuck to say, his mouth won’t form words and his brain can barely string together a coherent thought but he still knows this isn’t right. Even as she grinds her hips down on his rapidly growing erection part of him wants to melt into her embrace and respond and the other part wants to push her away and tell her they can’t do this. He doesn’t do either of those things though, just sits there with his hands dramatically out to the side, purposely not touching her at all while she leans in ever so slowly and whispers in his ear.

“Do you want me, Daryl?”

Does he ever. He hasn’t wanted anything or anyone more in his life and he nods against her temple as if on reflex. 

“Good, because I want you too.”

Then she’s kissing the spot behind his ear, trailing softly along his jaw and when she reaches his mouth there’s no hesitation before she captures it with her own, bold and firm and more than he can handle without breaking apart at the seems but he responds in spite of himself and wraps his hands around her waist, lets her kiss him with such ferocity that he thinks he might end up with bruised lips in the morning. 

She’s all around him, enveloping him, running her hands through his hair, bracketing his hips with her thighs and rocking her center against him and that’s when he leans back, all too aware of how easy it would be pull her jeans off and sink inside her and he’s more than certain she’d let him…and this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

“Wait. Wait, just…not like this.”

She’s confused, breathing heavy into the space between her mouth and his, her head tilting to the side. “Not like what?”

He doesn’t know how to explain it to her. How to tell her that this frantic tangle of limbs and motion isn’t who they are. Doesn’t know how to tell her that they mean more to each other than a quick fuck to burn off some steam. That this first time isn’t something they can ever get back and he doesn’t want it to feel like anything less than what they’ve both earned.

“Daryl, what is it? We don’t have to…if you don’t want to.”

“I do, I want to. I just..shit. I don’t know how to say this.”

“You think I might regret it if I get my memory back? Well I won’t. I know what I’m doing, I know that I like you and you like me and we’re two consenting adults that have some serious chemistry and there’s nothing wrong with this. We can do this, it’s ok. I just wanna be with you.”

That’s not what he’d been thinking at all. He should have been worried she’d remember everything soon and regret this choice, but that wasn’t at the forefront of his mind. He is less worried she’ll regret the act itself and more worried she’ll regret how it happened. 

Hearing her say she likes him only confirms that the woman in his lap is missing so much of their story, so much of what lead them here in the first place and it sinks a weight into his gut, making him feel even more wrong about what might happen. 

He doesn’t like her, he loves her. 

The Carol of last week loved him too. At least he thought she might…he hoped she did.

This Carol has no idea the magnitude of what she’s asking of him, no idea how much it means or hard it’s been for them to reach this point. All she knows is that she likes him and she’s feeling really, really good and she wants to feel even better with him.

Daryl feels slightly nauseous, hurt and confused all rolled up into a ball that’s still coated in arousal and he tells himself that he’s overthinking it, that the only option other than sleeping with her is to reject her and he can’t bring himself to do that. Not now, not ever. His dick twitching against her thigh, hard and throbbing and oblivious to all his inner turmoil, agrees.

Carol’s waiting for an answer but he can’t give her one with his voice, so he swallows down the doubt and focuses instead on how good she feels under his palms, soft and pliable and how the weight of her in his lap is something he never thought he’d get to feel and it’s just as sweet as he imagined. Then he’s pulling her to him again, kissing her breathless and gripping her hard with with both hands under her thighs so he can lift her up and deposit her onto the bed, wasting no time in ripping her shoes and jeans off, taking her panties with them and he’s already ahead of the game at being nearly naked, so once his towel drops all he has to do is crawl between her legs and she parts them easily. Looking up at his face as he covers her with a heady desire in her eyes and pink swollen lips and he has no doubt that she wants this, has no doubt that he does too because his cock is practically weeping and he hasn’t even gotten inside her yet.

He wants to make this good for her. Wants to take it slow and make love to her for the rest of the evening until they’re both sated and love drunk but that isn’t what this Carol wants and she’s already hooking her legs over his hips and urging him to move so he does. Sheathes himself inside her in one quick thrust that has her mouth open in a silent scream and her back arching off the bed and he’s worried for a moment that he hurt her by the way she’s clawing at his shoulders and clenching around his cock but then she rocks against him, hard and urgent and he responds instinctively, pushing into her further until he’s completely surrounded and she feels so fucking good that he has to stop a moment and gather himself so he doesn’t come after a few quick thrusts like a teenager.

He doesn't think of anything except the pleasure he wants for himself and for her. Only surface level emotions are welcome and he’s surprisingly good at shutting off the rest of his brain when he’s deep inside the woman he needs more than his next breath.

She’s a few moments away from writhing under him in frustration and when he finally moves its fast and rough, pulling almost all the way out before slamming into her again, keeping a quick pace and one look at her face shows him he made the right choice. Her eyelids are fluttering and her head is thrown back as her muscles tighten around his cock and he’s not going last long at all but he doesn’t think she will either. Hooks an arm under one of her legs and hitches it up high, her knee digging into his ribs and the new angle opens her up more so he can sink in even deeper. The look of surprise that flits across her face tells him she’s seconds away from coming and the way she constricts around him like a vice, her back bowing completely off the bed and up into his chest a moment later confirms it.

The harsh reality of her orgasm, pulsing and caressing him relentlessly is his own undoing and she clings to him while the white hot intensity rolls over him in waves and into her. 

She doesn’t make any move to push him off her yet and he's glad for it because he’s thoroughly spent, unable to do more than duck his head down into her shoulder and suck in a few heavy breaths. Her hands running through his hair and down the back of his neck send tingles into his scalp, lighting his nerve endings on fire and he sighs.

“That was…wow. Don’t you fall asleep though, I’m not done with you yet.”

She says it wickedly into his ear and he shivers at the implication. True to her word they barely pause long enough for him to get hard again before she’s pushing him over onto his back and straddling him, taking him inside to the hilt and riding them both to another high. 

It’s only later, when she’s worn out and curled into his side with her arm across his waist and her breath warm on his neck that he feels the tears come. Tries to blink them away as they well up but they’re relentless and all he can do is force himself not to shudder so he doesn’t wake her. Even then he can’t stop himself from hugging her to him and pretending just for a moment that she knows him again. She sleeps soundly though, content and satisfied and totally unaware of how deeply what they'd just done has affected him. 

He never knew that having everything he ever wanted could leave him feeling so lost.


	9. Chapter 9

Carol isn’t sure what time it is when she finally slides her eyelids open, but she’s pretty certain its late and yet Daryl still there with her. His face is the first thing she sees after blinking the sleep away. He’s on his side, facing her with his hair mussed and skin flushed and he gives her a shy half smile. Which she returns with one of her own, slightly amused because after everything they’d done the night before she thinks he has nothing to be shy about anymore.  
  
“Morning.” She reaches out a hand to brush the strands of hair from his eyes and it flops right back into it’s spot like it was meant to be there. She tries harder the next time, smoothing it back a little more firmly and leaving her palm light against his cheek.  
  
“Mornin’ how’d you sleep?”  
  
“Like the dead.” She pauses at his raised brow and then she’s laughing at her unintentional pun. “Sorry, that was terrible. I’m not used to what’s appropriate and what’s not yet.”  
  
“It’s alright. We’ll have you broken and humor free in no time. Stick with us.”  
  
He says it with a light tone but she frowns a little anyway, running her fingers lightly over the stubble along his jawline and seeing his eyelids flutter in response at her touch.   
  
When he opens them again she sees something there that she can’t decipher. A heaviness that coats his features that wasn’t there the day before and the faint hint of dried tear tracks across his skin tells her something’s been bothering him. There’s no trace of sadness in his voice now but clearly something had been wrong not long ago and she wants to know what. Especially since the pool of options for what it could be are quite limited. Not much has happened between when she came to him yesterday and this morning. Not much except what they’d done in this bed and she’s instantly worried that he might regret it.  
  
“You ok?”  
  
He nods, unwilling or unable to tell her the real reason for his sudden mood shift and much as she wants to she doesn’t push it. Figures he’ll tell her eventually. Doesn’t want to be the needy, clingy woman that asks a man to bear his soul to her the moment after they have sex. As if she has a right to it now where maybe she didn’t before. Lets her fingers stroke gently along his face instead, in slow, soft repetitions and maybe she’d been staring too long with only a few inches between them because he looks away quickly, breaking their connection and letting his gaze following a path from her neck down to where it meets the curve of her bare shoulder, sliding south to the top of a barely covered breast.   
  
A single fingers traces the same path a moment later, dragging the sheet down just low enough to give him access to a rosy nipple and his thumb flits across it in a light caress, undemanding and quick but she sucks in a breath anyway at the contact.   
  
“God, you are so beautiful.”  
  
His words are full of reverie and softness and more than a little bit of awe and her previous question is long forgotten in favor of what’s in front of her and she leans in just enough to brush her lips over his, light and easy, without a hint of the roughness she’d bestowed upon him the other day. He’s instantly receptive, curling an arm up her back and pulling her flush against him but making no move to take things further, being content to lay there with his hand ghosting over her back and his tongue tracing the seam of her lips while they enjoy the simple act of kissing each other.  
  
It’s not long before she can feel the evidence of his desire against her leg though and she’s absolutely on the same page, wanting to feel him wrapped around her in a slower version of the dance they’d already done.  
  
“I know it’s late but…we don’t have to be anywhere. Lets just stay here and have lazy morning sex until the others send a search party?”  
  
He’s still close enough that she can feel his nose nudging against hers when he huffs out a little laugh. “You? Lazy sex?”  
  
It’s not a jab, he’s teasing her and she knows it but she feels a little stab of guilt hit her heart at the implication that she only wants it hard and fast from him. That she only expects him to scratch an itch for her and nothing else. She’d been running on adrenaline the night before and there was no doubt that they’d taken things up several notches but despite her obvious need to work off some steam, she’d come to him for other reasons too. Thought maybe they could use her moment of boldness to kickstart something she thinks had already been brewing for a long time.  
  
She’s been given a second chance in more ways than one and the last thing she’s going to do is allow Daryl Dixon to slip away. He’s a keeper, she knows that much and if Previous Carol hadn’t had the balls to make him hers, then Current Carol will pick up that slack.  
  
Only now she wonders if she’d made a mistake in how it happened. He isn’t pulling away from her yet but there’s a hesitancy there that she doesn’t quite like. Almost as if he’d rather they keep up their fast paced tempo from here on out instead of easing into something a little more gentle and lot less frantic.  
  
She doesn’t know how to tell him that she wants the whole package, not just one facet of it but she tries anyway. Still close enough to speak her words into his mouth, one hand curled around his neck while she tries to make this right even though the exact problem still eludes her. “Hey, last night was…better than great, but that’s not all I want from you. You know that, right? You and me…there’s something here, Daryl. I can feel it. I know you even if I can’t remember you yet and I know that this…us, it feels right.”  
  
She thinks maybe she’s said the worst thing imaginable by the way his eyes start to water. Thinks maybe Previous Carol would have done a better job at this because she’s rapidly fucking it up. There’s something to be said for remembering the history of a relationship and she can’t help but feel like her missing puzzle pieces are hindering her now more than ever. She’s about to apologize and take it all back, doesn't want to upset him but then he’s pulling her to him again, kissing her with such delicate intimacy that she isn’t sure if it lasts a second or an hour before he’s pulling back again, resting his forward against hers and breathing her in.  
  
“We are right.”   
  
She smiles, letting it crinkles her eyes and then his lips flutter over the tip of her nose, one leg sliding between hers and they’re on their way to lazy morning sex when someone knocks loudly on the door.   
  
They spring apart as if on instinct, her clutching one edge of the bed and him grasping a pillow in a death grip to cover himself, even though he still has a properly placed sheet doing that job.  
  
“Daryl? Headin’ out if you wanna get an early start on the wall?”  
  
It’s Rick, oblivious to what’s happening behind the door in front of his face and Daryl falls back onto the bed, groaning in frustration and Carol has to stifle a laugh with a hand over her mouth.  
  
“Yeah. Be right out.”  
  
They get a muffled agreement from Rick and then his heavy footsteps pounding down the steps and she glances at Daryl from the corner of her eye, getting a good natured sigh in return.   
  
“Fuckin’ cockblocker. He ain’t even tryin’ and he still shows up at the right time.”  
  
“Good thing I’ll see you right back here tonight and we can pick up where we left off?”  
  
The side of his mouth quirks up and that bashful look is back again but he quietly nods to her in agreement. “It’s a plan. Also been thinkin’ maybe we fire Rosita and I take you out later? Do some target practice and shit.”  
  
She beams at him before she realizes she’s doing it, eager to take him up on this offer that’ll let her spend more time with the person she can’t seem to get enough of. “I’ll let her down easy.”  
  
  


  
  
  
They don’t go far for their first lesson. She can still see the walls of Alexandria. Still feel the safety of that closeness even though they’re outside in the wilderness, exposed to whatever might decide to pay them a visit. Daryl has brought her to an abandoned old house, decrepit and falling apart with a few targets posted on a tree and even thought they have an apparent bullet shortage he’s set her up with half a clip to empty into them.   
  
She does more than a decent job, nailing it every time and can barely keep the smile off her face as the last bullet flies into it’s proper place.   
  
He rolls his eyes at her expression but she can see the pride he’s hiding beneath it. “Alright don’t go gettin’ too smug. Here, try a couple with the bow. Good practice for aim when we can’t waste more bullets.”  
  
Carol holsters the gun and takes the offered bow, feels the weight of it in her hands and it’s heavier than she expected but she puts it up anyway, like she’s seen him do, bracing it against her shoulder and he reaches forward to adjust her positioning, sliding his hands over her back and down her arms and if he was anyone else it would feel distinctly like foreplay but this is Daryl and she’s certain that he remains totally unaware of what his touch is doing to her.   
  
Until she shudders under his fingertips and then he’s smirking with a satisfied but reserved grin and she snorts. “Ok, don’t  _you_  get too smug over there either.”  
  
Her first bolt misses the tree entirely but the second and third shots hit the target and hot damn she is good at this. Maybe it was a hidden talent she possessed all along that never saw the light of day until the end of the world or maybe it was something she cultivated because there was no other choice, but she is skilled in this area regardless of how it happened. She’s only too grateful that she doesn’t need her memories to fire accurately. That her body takes over and makes it happen.   
  
Daryl gives her a nod of approval, reaching for the bow and replacing it with a knife. Silver with rounded knuckles and it fits her hand perfectly. She gives him a curious look, hoping he’s not expecting her to throw it into the tree trunk because that might out of her realm of expertise but he just hands her the sheath for it, gesturing for her to fix it to her own hip.  
  
“It’s yours. ‘Bout time you had it back. Keep it on you all the time, ok? Just in case.”  
  
“Ok.” She wraps her fingers around the weapon, sliding them into the perfectly proportioned notches and hoping for a flash of memory to hit her but it never does.   
  
They fall in step with each other as they head back to Alexandria and it’s the crack of his foot against a stick, harsh and loud in her ears that makes her stop dead in her tracks. Makes her hear the sound of rocks instead, shifting under her feet while she’s being pulled forward by a hand on her arm. The grip is tight, large fingers digging into her skin and she winces, resists the tension immediately and pulls back only to be yanked forward even harder and the fear in the pit of her stomach coils like a spring.  
  
She digs her feet in, sees the man in front of her give her an icy glare before hauling his fist back and striking her across the face and then she’s crying, clutching her busted lip with one hand while other people she’s never seen before try to block her from him.   
  
She thinks he might hit her again, that he’ll surge forward and tackle her and no one will be able to stop it but then he’s gone and Daryl is in front of her instead, yelling at her with his hands waving wildly as she cries silent tears.   
  
He tells her to go, that he doesn’t need her there and then he pulls back his arm as if to strike her. She flinches reflexively, ready to take the hit she knows is coming, feeling partly like she deserves it and partly like it’s a price she’s willing to pay for him to have some catharsis but the blow never comes. They stare at each other for a few beats before his face fades and the cloudy sky comes into view instead.   
  
She feels the crunch of the leaves beneath her head and sees Daryl leaning over her, concerned and surprised and she must have fallen to the ground because she’s certainly not upright anymore. Tries to spring to her feet, certain she’s still caught in the memory but a hand pushes her back.  
  
“Easy, easy, just go slow. You hit the ground pretty hard there. What just happened?”  
  
She can’t answer him. Can only feel the fear still holding her hostage, the pain in her cheekbone from the hit, the taste of blood on her lips and the hurt of his words in her chest. It’s all jumbled together, Daryl and this other man she doesn’t recognize. A part of her fills in the blank, whispering in her ear that this memory is an answer to why her husband wasn’t a good person. She can’t separate one incident from the other though, the violence from one man and the anger from another are too fresh and they sting equally as hard.   
  
All she really wants is to get away.   
  
From the woods. From Daryl. From everything.  
  
He reaches for her as she lifts to her feet but she shrugs out of his grip, bolting for the walls of the safe zone without looking back.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Carol headed straight for the house and up the stairs. Locking the door to her room behind her and sliding down it a second later, feeling the wood at her back as her knees bent and her hands covered her face, desperately trying to make sense of what she’d seen.  
  
Several hours later she’s no closer to an answer as she had been then. In fact its worse now, with the darkness of night creeping in and her memories slushing up together in a constant loop. She’s in bed by now, curled under the covers and listening to the steady sounds outside her door. She’d heard Daryl in come in soon after she did, heard him climb the stairs and pause outside her door for a exceptionally long minute before he shuffled away, his own door closing not long after.  
  
Now, she can hear those same sounds in other rooms. Doors opening and closing as people prepare for sleep until all is silent again in the house.   
  
Without those distractions to focus on she’s alone with her own thoughts again and that’s exactly where she doesn’t want to be. It’s easy to become angry at her own brain for betraying her. For showing her moments she didn’t want to see instead of ones she did. For making her look at Daryl and see anger and violence instead of the gentle soul she’d come to know this past week. It’s nearly impossible to reconcile the image of him raising a hand to her with the person across the hall.  
  
They are not the same, she thinks. They can’t be.   
  
Carol can almost accept the vision of her late husband towering over her and striking her hard much easier than she can accept such things from Daryl. Is already trying to justify it in her mind, telling herself that he stopped. That he didn’t actually hit her and that the fear she felt standing in front of him was residual from her other memory.   
  
She lays there turning the images over in her mind until she’s frustrated and agitated and the tears roll down her cheeks and onto her pillow. Until she’s crying so hard she thinks she might rupture something because everything she knows to be true is wrong now, tilted and fractured and how can she ever trust anyone again.   
  
She only knew two things for certain. That the world is overrun by the dead and that Daryl is safe. Now one of those facts is in question and it’s more than she can handle.  
  
Except she does still trust him. Even now, after seeing him in such a state, after seeing his rage directed at her, she still trusts him enough that it makes no sense whatsoever and only frustrates her more. She feels like two people at war with each other. The silent part of her that remembers him, hidden deep inside trying to drag her in one direction while the other part tries to pull her back.   
  
She doesn’t know which version of her is right, but there has to be a reason she’s so drawn to Daryl in the first place. Has to be a hundred different moments that wrap around the one she saw that could put it into enough context to make sense. The fact that she craves his reassurance even now has to mean something, she thinks. And crave it, she does.  
  
She wants to ask him. Wants to go over there right now and ask him why they were fighting, beg him to ease her worries and bring the whole picture into view but maybe he wouldn’t even want to see her now. After she’d literally left him in her dust earlier.   
  
Still, her nerves are fried and her mind in tattered shreds and after laying in bed for another hour, staring at the ceiling and trying to keep her eyes from spilling over she quietly gets out of bed and pads across the hall from her room to his, only hesitating a moment before rapping her knuckles on the door.   
  
Maybe he can give her some answers.   
Maybe she hasn’t completely run him off yet.   
Maybe he won’t reject her.  
  
She doesn’t actually give him time to offer rejection though, trying the doorknob a half second later and finding it unlocked, pushing it slowly open and peeking her head inside to see him halfway out of bed, likely coming answer the door for her and when they lock eyes she can see that he’s been just as upset as she is but there’s no anger there, only confusion and sadness and that’s when she starts sobbing uncontrollably, her shoulders shaking and her arms wrapping around herself.  
  
“Come’ere. Come on.”  
  
His voice is gentle and welcoming and he lifts the blanket for her. She accepts instantly, closing the door and sliding into bed with him, curling against his chest and feeling his arms wrap around her tightly, holding her to him like he’s afraid to let her go.  
  
“It’s ok. Whatever happened, it’s alright.”  
  
He whispers it against her temple, smoothing a hand over the back of her head, letting her press her face into the curve of his neck and wet it with her tears and in that moment she knows which part of her was right. That the Daryl in bed with her now, trying with everything he has to make her feel safe and cared for is the real one and the one in her memory doesn’t exist anymore.  
  
“I’m sorry I ran away. I’m sorry I’m crying on you. I feel like all I do now is cry.”  
  
Her voice hitches when she speaks and he shushes her, telling her it’s fine and that he’s just glad she made it back safely, asking if she wants to talk about what happened and she really, really does, but the fear of an answer is too strong to let her speak the questions.  
  
“You get a memory? That’s what scared you?”  
  
She nods, sniffing into his skin.   
  
“You don’t haveta tell me but if you want to, I’ll listen.”  
  
How does she tell this man who’s so obviously given her all of his heart that her brain remembered only bad things about him. About them.   
  
It feels wrong and selfish to unburden herself of that and so she doesn’t, only nods again and keeps silent instead. Letting him hold her close, focusing on the feel of his palm drifting over her back, the warmth of his breath at her hairline and the beating of his heart that nearly matches the speed of her own.


	10. Chapter 10

The next morning Carol is seated on a bar stool in the kitchen, sipping her coffee and wondering how much of that they actually have left before she’ll be craving a cup and going through withdrawals when Daryl tells her he has to leave. ‘Go on a supply run’ is the phrase he uses but all she can hear is that he’s going outside the walls, further than could be even remotely safe and she doesn’t like that idea one bit.   
  
The confusion she felt the night before is still there, but the fear has ebbed away. Spending the entire night with Daryl wrapped around her, with his pulse thumping against her skin and his hands soothing her nerves certainly went a long way toward helping that happen and she’d fallen into a restful sleep not long after crawling into bed with him.    
  
Now, with a new day in front of them her main priority is the fact that he won’t be here soon.   
  
It’s irrational and she knows it. He can’t stay inside the walls forever, he’s needed out there and this isn’t the first or last time time he’ll have to leave but it still strikes a pang of fear in her chest. Anything could happen. Him telling her that Glenn and Abe will be there to does nothing to ease her fears because she doesn’t know them. Doesn’t know for sure that they’ll have his back and keep him safe but she has no choice in the matter so she tries to play the supportive and easy going part, practically pulling it off without a hitch, asking him to be careful and jokingly saying she’d love some chocolate if he happens to find any (but to absolutely not go out of his way for it) when he points to her face with a confused look.   
  
“What?”   
  
“You’re doin’ that thing. That half frown that makes me think the coffee’s gone bad, but that ain’t it, is it?”   
  
She sighs, he is too perceptive for his own good. “Just worried about you. Which is silly, I know. You can take care of yourself, you’re used to this. I’m not yet though. I bet by the time you go on run number forty two I’ll think it’s no big deal.”   
  
He’s drinking his own coffee, having forgone creamer and sugar to dump half a packet of hot coco mix into it, transforming it into some sort of coffee mocha hybrid. “Always some worry. Gets easier but it’s always there. Been years and I still used to hate when you were goin’ out at all.”   
  
He admits this in an uneasy way, like he isn’t used to baring any sort of feelings about her…about them, out loud but now he has permission and he’s trying to ease into it. She corrects her half frown, turning it upward just enough. “Well you don’t have to worry about that for a while. I’m fast on my way to becoming a hermit. Especially after what happened last time I went out.”   
  
“We don’t know that’ll happen every time. Give it a little while, then we’ll try again? It’s dangerous out there but staying in here for the rest of your life ain’t no solution either. These walls…they start to close in eventually.”   
  
“Ok. We’ll try again. Someday. Eventually.”   
  
He snorts a little, sliding his cup over to her. “Wanna try it? Saw you eyein’ my creation.”   
  
“No, no. That’s all you….” Then she smells the coco wafting up and it actually does smell pretty damn good and she relents. “…well, maybe just a little.”   
  
She lifts the mug to give his coffee and chocolate mixture a taste, quirking a brow and gracing him with an approving smile afterward. “Ok, it’s good. You win.”   
  
He looks satisfied with her compliment, downing the rest and dumping the cup in the sink. Grabbing his coat off a chair and stopping in front of her and she knows that the time for teasing and coffee drinking is over and now he really has to go and what the hell is she going to do here without him. She hadn’t been kidding before when she said she felt like a hermit, it’s already settling in, slowly but surely and without the only person she spends most of her time with she has a feeling she’ll be quite alone in the near future.   
  
“Just gonna be a day or two. Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”   
  
He’s standing between her parted legs, her feet propped up on the rims of the bar stool and his hands on her waist, feather light as if he’s not sure yet how to touch her when they aren’t in the middle of burning up the sheets.    
  
“Hey, that’s my line.” Her voice is soft and her expression consciously welcoming because she wants him to take the signals she’s giving so clearly and lean in for a good bye kiss and while they might have some work to do on their communication skills, he gets that message clear enough and does just that. Dropping a gentle kiss on her lips, no tongue, no tension, just his soft mouth slanting over hers in an easy caress and before she knows it she’s got her hand threading through the hair at his temple and another fisting the shirt at his chest.    
  
They can’t take this further though and they both know it. No time, things to do and errands to run and so he reluctantly pulls away, shaking his head slightly, like he can’t quite believe that just happened, that they are kissing like normal people in a normal kitchen.    
  
He’s gone a few minutes later, grabbing his bow by the door and heading for the gates and she doesn’t leave the kitchen at all because watching him drive away sounds decidedly like self torture.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Why can’t I remember anything good?”   
  
Carol is at Denise’s house. On the front porch, which doesn’t have a swing but the over padded rocking chairs do just fine as replacements. She’d been slacking on her self appointed therapy sessions lately and considering everything that’s happened between her last one and today she thought it was long past due to pester Denise into helping her straighten out a few things.   
  
The other woman takes a sip of her iced tea, grimacing at the taste. “I’ll admit those last two memories are pretty serious, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get anything good. There could be more coming. Or…there could be nothing else coming. You should be prepared for both outcomes. Logically though, it makes sense that you’d get unhappy ones first. How often do we as humans dwell on the good stuff? Hardly ever. We love to sit around and dwell on bad shit. Over and over again. So of course your mind will call that up easier than the rest.”   
  
“I guess. I just…I want to remember my daughter. I want to remember Daryl. How we met, all the little moments that he knows and I’m missing. I want to remember the other people here so I can talk to them without feeling like I’m…out of place. But instead I get visions of my ex hitting me and Daryl ranting and it’s not fair.”   
  
She’s pretty worked up by this point, irritated and angry at herself and her words bite off at the ends, tasting bitter in her mouth and she knows that last comment is uncalled for because nothing is fair anymore. No one gets a free pass, but dammit she wants a good fucking memory and she’s going to complain at least this once about not getting any.   
  
Denise gives her a sympathetic look, rocking in her chair and looking distinctly professional as she doles out advice. “It’s not. It blows. All of this blows really hard for you and I wish I had some suggestions for how to get at those good ones but there’s no rhyme or reason to this stuff. No choice but to take it as it comes. Much as that sucks balls.”   
  
Carol laughs a little at that, taking a sip of her own ice tea which is dry and unsweetened to save sugar. Yankee tea is what they called it in the south back when she still lived in Ohio and at least she’s still used to it, not minding the taste at all. “That’s very colorful and right on point. It sucks balls a lot. Thanks for that.”   
  
“Any time. That’s what I’m here for. Colorful cursing and phrasing and the occasional therapy session.”   
  
“You know, I sort of feel bad about coming to you all the time to unload. I know you didn’t sign up for this either.”   
  
Denise shrugs, seemingly unbothered. “It’s what I went to school for because it’s what I wanted to do. This medical stuff I do because they need me here. I suck at it a little but I’m trying. Hard. The brain stuff though, I enjoy it…which I guess sounds weird because I don’t enjoy what happened to you, but this whole situation is…a way for me to use what I actually know. Does that make sense? I just hope I’m helping and not making it worse. I never said I was a  _good_  shrink.”   
  
“It does make sense and you are helping, more than you know. More than just trying to decipher my brain too. I sometimes feel like…the others are avoiding me. I don’t think they mean to, maybe they don’t know how to act around me now but either way it’s nice to have someone to talk to. Someone other than Daryl because a lot of the time he’s what I want to talk about.”   
  
Denise smirks at her, nodding in agreement. “He’s an interesting subject…how’s things been with you two? You told me about the memory but I get the feeling that I’m missing some things here.”   
  
Carol isn’t sure how to respond to that. She did tell Denise about the memory, about their field trip and target practice and the clusterfuck of events that followed. Even told her that she ended up crawling into Daryl’s bed afterward. Expressing how unsure she was of telling him that specific memory and getting the good advice to think on it a few days before she decided to bring it up to him, but she neglected to mention what they’d done the night before. Not wanting to tell anyone else their personal business, not wanting word to spread if it might hurt or embarrass Daryl to have other’s know. Isn’t sure he’s ready for them to have public status yet. Maybe not at all.    
  
But she also desperately wants to talk to someone about this big huge step they’ve taken and Denise is the prime candidate for that position. It’s tempting beyond belief to spill all the details about their night together and she feels guilty even as she starts to speak.   
  
“What we say here, it stays here right? Patient confidentiality or whatever that is? Like Vegas?”   
  
That gets an eyebrow raise from Denise, making her slide forward to the edge of her chair, eager to hear what comes next. “Yeah, for sure. I won’t tell anyone.”   
  
“Not even Tara?”   
  
Denise nods, looking completely honest and determined.”I swear. Not even Tara. She can’t keep a secret to save her life anyway, I already know she’s not invited into this loop. Don’t worry.”   
  
“Ok.” She pauses, lowering her voice several decibels, feeling like she’s spilling a deep dark secret when in reality they've done nothing wrong at all. “We slept together. The night before the memory event in the woods. Well…more like I jumped him, high on adrenaline after killing that walker with Rosita, and he let me…yeah, so that happened.”   
  
Denise’s mouth is hanging open, the faint hint of wonder on her face and then she breaking into a wide smile that Carol thinks might be more than she’s earned. “Yes! Hell yes! Good for you. Good for both of you. God knows you guys deserve a little happiness. How was it…I mean, I don’t need details or anything, I’m mostly asking how do you feel about it now and how do you think he feels about it?”   
  
“I don’t regret it, not one bit. You ever been just…drawn to someone in a way you can’t explain but you know that it’s right?”   
  
Denise nods, giving her a soft smile.   
  
“It’s like that for me. Previous Carol…that’s what I call her, she’s in here somewhere telling me that this one is worth the effort, that he’s special, that he cares about me. And then everything he does only proves it more. I don’t know how we were with each other before all this but I think maybe it would have happened anyway. Eventually.”   
  
“This is good then, right?”   
  
“It is…except maybe he’s not the type that you just pin down and have your way with, like I sort of did and for a minute there I think I might have fucked it all up by going about it that way. I don’t know, maybe I still have. He was…different the morning after, reserved, sort of sad, I don’t know what that was about but I think I fixed it? Maybe? Fuck, I don’t fucking know. Why can’t I remember him, Denise? Why? This is killing me. I feel like he has so much…more in his heart for me than I have for him and it’s not because I don’t feel those things but some stuff you can’t get without history, you know?”   
  
She stops to take a breath, realizing she’s been ranting in one long continuous string but Denise doesn’t seem to mind. Leaning back in her chair and curling her legs up.    
  
“I know. We are the sum of our memories. They’re what shape us into the people we’ve become, they’re what helps us form bonds with each other and travel through life together instead of alone. Without those, without all of them, it’s going to be harder for you. That’s just a fact. You can’t be on the same playing field as him because he’s already started the game a while ago and you’ve just begun. I do know, though, that he doesn’t hold that against you. Now that you’ve taken that step, what matters more than how it started is how you move forward.”   
  
“Makes sense when you say it like that.”   
  
“Good, so just keep looking ahead then. The two of you will figure it out.”   
  
 “I hope so. You won’t tell him I told you all this, right? I don’t want him to think I’m running off at the mouth to everyone. I don’t think he’d appreciate that, he’s a private person. Seems that way anyway.”   
  
Denise nods, draining the rest of her tea. “I promise. What happens on the porch, stays on the porch.”   
  
“Thanks. I know this is all frivolous anyway when our biggest worry is literally getting eaten alive, but I think I’m mostly trying to distract myself from the fact that he’s out there. Talking about things like this is better than thinking about what could go wrong.”   
  
“It’s not frivolous. Just because there’s clear and present danger twenty four seven doesn’t mean the other stuff like this isn’t important too. Also, in that same vein, try not to wait to long to talk to him about that memory. The more you let it fester the harder it’ll be to get a resolution that’ll feel satisfying.”   
  
Carol agrees, much as she hates the idea of talking to him about what she saw, she knows they can’t keep secrets from each other. If they have any hope of making this work they have to be honest and open and she needs to trust that he can handle the twisted images her mind plays out for her.   
  
  
  
  
  
It’s two days later when the cars carrying Daryl, Abe and Glenn finally roll through the gates again. Carol knew they were going further out this time, that supplies had dried up and they couldn’t stick close anymore but two days had felt like two weeks and she’s only too happy to see him climb out of the passenger side of a worn old Prius.    
  
They seem to have brought back a decent haul, already beginning to unload boxes and containers before she can even reach them. She’d started half way down the street, on her way back from the pantry when they arrived and others had already gotten there ahead of her. She sees Maggie hugging Glenn, kissing him soundly before helping him unload a box. Rosita giving Abe a playful shove and him smacking her on the ass before he practically throws a box at her and she catches it.    
  
Then there’s Daryl, doing a really good job of trying not to look for her.    
  
He hasn’t seen her yet, focused on the opposite direction and pointedly ignoring the couples around him, and really, if she wasn’t aware of how he is, she’d assume nothing is amiss at all but she can tell, even from several yards away that maybe he’d been hoping she’d be there to. Meeting him at the gate like Rosita and Maggie met their respective parters and she can’t make her feet move fast enough without actually running, which she refuses to do for multiple reasons, but eventually she reaches him just as he’s popping open the trunk.    
  
She’s relieved to see his eyes light up when he notices her behind him, even if his face barely changes and when he just stands there for half a second, ducking his head with that shy half smile she wastes no more time in reaching up on her tip toes and wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling her to him.    
  
He responds immediately, snugging her in a little closer with both arms low on her waist while she whispers in his ear how happy she is to see him home safe.    
  
She does not kiss him. Even though she wants to. Doesn’t want to risk pushing the boundaries of his comfort levels with public affection. The hug itself is quick and innocent and they’ve drawn no obvious attention that she can tell once they’ve parted.    
  
The way his eyes twinkle and he tries to hold in a prideful smile tells her she made the right choice with this tiny display. Denise’s words flit through her mind, telling her that all that matters now is how they move forward and Carol thinks if she doesn’t manage to get anything else right, at least she can try to make sure he knows she cares. That she misses him when he’s gone and appreciates him when he’s here. That he’s important to her in all the ways that count and this moment between them is one of the first few bricks in a new foundation.   
  
Neither her or Daryl noticed Tobin half way across the street, scowling at them and muttering under his breath as they head toward the pantry with part of the supply haul.   
  
  



	11. Chapter 11

Daryl is standing in front of his bed staring down at the semi clean sheets and wondering just how often the average person washes theirs. He’d stuck them in the washer the day after he and Carol had made that a clear necessity but now, almost a week later, he’s got no clue if it’s time yet or if they get a few more days reprieve.   
  
He bends down and gives them a sniff, then does the same to the pillows and everything on that bed smells like her. Peaches and cream with a hint of spice and something else that wafts up his nose and makes a home there. He likes it, feels like maybe washing them is a bad idea because then they’ll smell like detergent and he’d rather climb into bed and smell her, both from her softly against him and from the fabric wrapped around him but he’s worried she’ll be put off if he doesn’t clean the damn things regularly.  
  
Remembers seeing on some home and garden tv show he’d flicked to in passing that once a week is considered normal, two weeks is pushing it and once a month means you’re a heathen so really it should be fine. She might not even notice and why the hell is he so worried about his sheets anyway, it’s not like they’re about to get up and walk away on their own but he strips them off and carts them down the steps to the laundry room regardless. Better safe than sorry, he thinks.   
  
He wants it to be nice for her. Wants it to be welcoming and clean so it’ll be that much easier to convince her to join him every night. It’s not something they’ve discussed. He doesn’t even know if normal people ‘discuss’ that type of thing or if it’s some unspoken rule that once you’ve slept together you just start  _sleeping together_  full time, but either way he’s on edge about it. Something so trivial and silly and it only highlights how little experience he has with any of this. He doesn’t know how to be a good significant other for anyone because he’s never held that position before and now that he’s found her…and it would seem that maybe he gets to keep her…he doesn’t want to fuck up any of the little details.   
  
She’d stayed with him the night before, after he’d come home from the supply run and she hugged him in full view of the general population of Alexandria like it was a natural thing they do all the time, which it absolutely is not, but damn it had felt good and he could barely keep the smile off his face afterward. Had the crazy urge to see if anyone had noticed. To show her off and make sure people knew she was with him now. That he had someone. Not just anyone either. The most important someone in the entire fucking place and she chose him.   
  
He had done nothing of the sort of course, because at the very least he’s still mostly sane.   
  
She turned in early that night, asking him if he was coming too or staying up late and of course he was coming so he followed her straight up the stairs like a smitten puppy and that’s how they ended up sharing his bed again. He just isn’t sure if this is a going to be a regular occurrence now.  
  
Regardless of the status of their future sleeping arrangements one thing was clear enough and that’s that neither one of them seemed to know how to kickstart what had come so easily a week ago. They’d laid there, facing each other with dual questions playing in both their eyes.   
  
_Do you want to?_  
_If you do...do you want to?_  
_Maybe but I can't tell if you do._  
  
Then she’d broken the tension and curled around him, falling asleep like nothing was amiss and he was only too happy that he hadn’t gotten an unwanted hard on through out the night to make the situation weirder.  
  
He should have known that they might have trouble moving on from hard and fast to something…else. Something more.  
  
If he’s being honest with himself it hadn’t been easy the first time either, for him at least. She had taken the lead and with it most of the pressure on just how to satisfy her, which was a welcome thing because fuck knows he needed that extra help, but he remembers all too well just how difficult it had been emotionally even though there was no doubt that he wanted it.   
  
Now…with her seeming to want more from him than just a way to burn off some adrenaline he finds that he both craves her even more and is terrified of what they could have at the same time. The thought of real intimacy with her is everything he's ever wanted, yet it twists his brain up into knots and he barely knows how he feels about any of this anymore.  
  
He wonders if maybe she’s having similar feelings. If that’s why neither of them tried harder the night before to make it happen again and had been content to drift off in each other arms instead.  
  
Daryl sighs as he turns on the washing machine after dumping in a healthy amount of detergent and extra fabric softener. It’s already getting late and he can see the darkness creeping in outside the windows. Can see something else too as he looks out, the distinct figure of the person that occupies his mind all day every day. She’s seated on the front steps, her back to him as he watches her. This is a new thing she does since the accident. Sitting outside excessively, on the swing but sometimes on the steps and he wonders if maybe that has something to do with the hermit situation she mentioned before. If she’s starting to get cabin fever being cooped up in the house because he knows for damn sure no one else is taking her anywhere. They don’t even come over to check on her let alone include her in anything going on in the community and it bugs the shit out of him.   
  
She’s not contagious, she just can’t remember them. They aren’t making it easy for her to find those memories either. Daryl makes a mental note to talk to someone…who he isn’t sure yet…about what the fuck is going on there because it’s like Carol has been declared a no fly zone and he’s not the one who’s issued the warning.  
  
He’s about to go out there when he remembers something and heads back to the kitchen, reaching into a cabinet and pulling out a small package that was hidden behind several bigger ones and tucking it into his pocket before finally heading out.  
  
Carol looks up as he approaches, sliding over to one side so he can take up the other and he does, easing down onto the step next to her and nudging her shoulder with his own. “What’s up out here?”  
  
She nudges him back, the whisper of a smile on her lips. “Oh lots of things. Mrs. Henderson down the way still takes her trash cans out. Like someone is gonna empty them. I wonder if someone does or if they’re still full when she takes them back up again.” She pauses to point across the street at a window with a thin curtain. “I think that’s Abe and Rosita up there. Can’t be sure but I know that someone hefted up a tiny woman and threw her across the room and I hope there’s a bed where she landed. Thank god we can’t see that, right? ” She shudders hard enough that he can tell it’s fake and he gives her a stink face to commiserate because he sure as hell doesn’t want to see Abe and Rosita fucking. There’s not enough bleach in Alexandria to fix his eyeballs after that.   
  
“Tobin walked by twice. Attempted to stop once and offer me a cigarette and then wandered away when I refused it. Like I smoke…I mean why would I want to kill myself from lung cancer should I be lucky enough to survive everything else?”  
  
He must look suspiciously guilty then and she side eyes him. “No…I don’t smoke do I? Tell me that’s not true. I quit a long time ago, it was a phase in my twenties.”  
  
“No, not you. Well…you have…but I don’t think it’s a regular thing for you. I meant me.”  
  
“Daryl…”   
  
She's frowning now, looking like she wants to scold him or beg him to stop but she doesn’t do either, just leans her shoulder into his and looks out at the lighted street and he caves so easily he’s not sure why he bothered to think for a second that maybe he wouldn’t. “I’m gonna quit. You’re right. If we don’t get taken out by walkers how fucked would it be to go from all these cancer sticks?”  
  
Her face softens as she looks up at him. “Yeah? Good. I want you around as long as I can have you.”  
  
The conversation lulls after that, both of them happy to just sit next to each other on a slightly chilly evening but then she leans away, regarding him with a serious look and he gets a pang of dread. Thinking something must be wrong and what could have happened between now and the last time he saw her?  
  
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something. I don’t really know how…that’s why I haven’t said anything sooner. It’s hard for me to get this one right even in my own head let alone out loud but I think it’s important enough that I have to try.”  
  
Well shit now he’s really worried. “What is it?”  
  
“That day in the woods, when I had the memory and I ran off…I saw something that confused me and I hope maybe you can make sense of it. Or give me some sort of explanation for what was happening?”  
  
“Ok. I’ll try.”  
  
“I saw my husband and I think I know now why you said he wasn’t a good person. Saw…no felt…him hitting me in some sort of quarry with other people around. You weren’t there and they aren’t here now, but that part of the memory isn’t what I need help with. I think it’s pretty self explanatory that I married an asshole. That all of this….” She gestures to her body, to the parts of her where he felt raised scar tissue and puckered skin when his hands were roaming over it.   
  
“…all of the marks on me, he left them there. I know that now. But then he was gone and I saw you. We were fighting, I don’t know why but you were so angry and I was so sad. I was crying and you were yelling at me and I need you tell me what happened. Please. Because none of that makes any sense.”  
  
Her voice has gotten so quiet by the end that its barely a whisper and he thinks he might have stopped breathing entirely. Of all the things for her to remember it has to be one of the moments he wishes he could take back.  
  
She doesn’t seem upset with him over what she saw but now he knows why she flinched away from him in the woods. Why she ran for the safety of the walls instead of the safety of his arms. Why she nearly spent the whole night in another room. He feels a familiar wave of guilt and regret shift up from where he’d buried it long ago.   
  
Daryl isn’t sure how to explain that day in her memory. He can hardly explain is actions to himself. Knows the circumstances around it but also knows he was feeling a cluster of emotions he can’t even name, all tangled together until they erupted into the rage she saw.   
  
Then there’s the fact that this subject is connected to another one. Sophia.  
  
She’s patently waiting for an answer though and this isn’t one he can refuse to give her.   
  
“That was a long time ago. It was right after…after we found out Sophia didn’t make it. I regret it, shouldn’t have gotten so upset. Wish I could take it back.”  
  
She looks more confused now and he’s doing a shit job of this already. “I don’t understand why you’d be so angry with me about that. I’m missing something here, Daryl. I need details. All of them.”  
  
“Sophia got lost in the woods. Got separated from the group out on the road and we all went looking for her every day. Couldn’t find her. Ended up at this farm, they took us in, let us stay there. Still went out to look for your girl though, didn’t quit. I promise, but she wasn’t out there. Was in the barn on this farm we just didn’t know it. Had already turned…this family they didn’t understand what walkers are, not then anyway. That memory you saw was pretty soon after we found her in that barn. You were already so upset…and all I wanted was to find her for you. Every damn day I’d go out there and look and come back empty and then I find out she wasn’t even out there at all….you and I, we didn’t know each that well then. Just met really…I was terrible to you and you didn’t deserve it. Was like kickin' someone when they were already down. You’d lost your girl and I was making it worse…I just wanted to find her and I couldn’t. Think I was pushin’ you away because the whole damn thing just hurt so bad.”  
  
If he wasn't taking normal breaths before he certainly isn’t now because he’d barely stopped to suck in air during his explanation, too focused on getting it out that nothing else mattered only now he can feel his cheeks wet from tears he hadn’t realized he’d been crying and Carol is looking at him like whatever he’s just said makes some sort of sense to her. She’s far less emotionally distraught than he is and in that moment he's grateful for her forced detachment from something as horrific and scaring as losing her child.   
  
“Oh. I think I see now. We were both hurting that day, we just dealt with it a little differently.”  
  
He sorts through his tears. “Just a little different.”  
  
That’s when he feels her hand on his face, turning his head toward her so she can look him in the eye and he goes willingly, his own eyes still wet, spilling over onto her fingers and even though he doesn't  _feel_  like he's crying they betray him anyway. “I’m so sorry. For everything. That I didn’t find her. That I yelled at you. I wouldn’t ever put a hand to you, I know it mighta looked that way but never, Carol. I swear it.”  
  
“I know. I know you wouldn’t. That day is over now and you don’t need to be sorry. I forgave you for the anger a long time ago, I know I did. And not finding Sophia…that was never your fault. You tried that’s what matters. Don’t hold onto to this ok?”  
  
Daryl nods into her hand, noticing just how close they are, leaning into each other on the steps with only an inch or two between them, whispering words in the dark like they’re secrets and then she’s pulling him to her, letting him rest his forehead on her shoulder and stroking the hair at the back of his neck and he melts into her on contact.  
  
 “I’m sorry I brought it up. My need for context for these memories is so overwhelming that I don’t stop to think that maybe you don’t want to remember these things I’m asking you about. I’m probably gonna do it again too. Bring up memories that are better left behind.”  
  
He pulls back then, wanting her know that nothing is off limits between them and not to censor herself on his behalf. “You need to know something, you ask. It’s alright. Don’t want you not sayin’ anything because you’re worried about how I’m gonna react. Don’t need to be bottling none of that up.”  
  
She nods, giving him a sad smile. He hadn’t planned on this evening taking such a downward turn and now he’s at a loss for how to turn it back around again but as he shifts his weight he feels a crinkle in his pocket as a possible answer. Pulls out a small orange package and extends it to her hopefully.  
  
“I ah…gotcha somethin’. On the run. Forgot to give it to you earlier.”  
  
Her eyes light up when she sees the candy he’s offering and he instantly feels like he’s done something right. “Reeses! You found chocolate. Oh my god I love these.”  
  
Carol rips into the wrapper a second later, taking out both pieces and giving him one before she bites into hers with a blissful expression he’s only seen once before, and that was when they’d been doing something else that didn’t involve chocolate. “This…Daryl, this is amazing.”  
  
He has to agree, it’s pretty damn good and he inhales his own piece in zero point five seconds flat. Earning a huff of a laugh from her as she delicately nibbles at the edges of her own candy.   
  
“Thank you for finding this. You about ready for bed? It’s guess it’s getting late.”  
  
He is ready for bed and her assumption that they’ll be heading there together makes his heart speed up on the spot, but then he remembers their bedding is still in the wash. “I am but we can’t yet. Put the sheets in the machine.”  
  
She gasps, putting her hand to her chest and looking a little overcome. “Oh my. Chocolate _and_  clean sheets? Be still my heart.”  
  
He bumps her with his shoulder again, ducking his head and not knowing how to respond so he goes for a reply that’s always handy just in case. “Stahp.”  
  
  
  



	12. Chapter 12

It’s been days since she remembered anything and Carol’s starting to wonder if maybe she won’t anymore. If her brain has short circuited enough that all the other stuff is just lost in the void and all she’ll ever have are these fragmented bad memories and one possible good one…which could be a fluke in itself.  
  
Sometimes she thinks she might see things in her sleep but she can’t be sure if it’s a memory or just a useless, meaningless dream and by the time she’s awake enough to process it it’s gone again. Like it was never really there at all.  
  
Has been considering keeping a notebook by the bed from now on so she can jot down those early morning semi-dreams and maybe craft together some sort of story from them. With her luck all she’ll get to write in there are memories of food.  
  
Last night had been dream free though. She’d slept straight through on fresh clean sheets with Daryl draped across her like a blanket. He is a snuggler, this much she’s noticed even if he doesn’t seem quite aware of the expert level he reaches while he’s sound asleep.  
  
They start out average enough. Him spooned behind her, his breath in her hair and his arms around her waist and it’s blissful, that feeling of security with him at her back and she drifts off within minutes. A feat in it’s self since she used to be a night owl, up at all hours without the ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Used to be jealous of people who could do that and now here she is, one of them. All it took was a man curled around her like she’s the most important thing in his world.  
  
But then, as the night wears on and she wakes from a dream or from just being hot she’ll notice that he’s shifted around in his sleep. It’s impossible not to really, since he does everything he can to practically crawl inside her skin. She’d woken once on her back with his face pressed into her neck and his arm thrown over her middle, curled up around her ribs and tucked under her shoulder, like he was trying to pull her closer and passed out during the effort.  
  
Another time she woke on her side, having done some re-arranging of her own, to find his leg between both of hers and her head tucked under his chin. Snug as they could possibly get without merging together entirely.   
  
Carol isn’t complaining. Quite the contrary, she likes it. She’s a snuggler too, she just didn’t peg him to be one as well. Maybe he doesn’t even have a clue that he does it since he’s normally shifted a little further away by the time she wakes up in the morning and she hasn’t mentioned it to him for fear of embarrassing him and causing all that warm cuddling to be a thing of the past.  
  
There hasn’t however, been any sex to speak of since that first night and the reason why eludes her. That’s what she’s pondering when she finds herself in a mostly silent kitchen with Rick and she’s pretty sure she’d prefer to have never gotten out of bed that morning at all because this is awkward as hell and she doesn’t know how to fix it. Rick has barely said two words to her since that first day she saw him and while she doesn’t think he’s purposely trying to be distant, he’s not trying to be available either.  
  
She’d almost forgotten that he lives in the same house as her until he’d been in the kitchen already when she came down that morning. Daryl had already left to do whatever it is he does around the community and she’d been late to roll out of bed and then bam, rolled smack into a weird scenario with one of her roommates.  
  
He’d been polite, asking her if she wanted coffee and even pouring her a cup and then the room had lapsed into uncomfortable silence.  
  
Rick is seated across from her on an opposite bar stool, sipping his own coffee and trying not to sneak looks her way and she decides this is ridiculous and that she needs to say something to break the silence but he beats her to it. Much to her surprise.  
  
“So how are you adjusting? To all…this?”  
  
She shrugs. “As well as I can I suppose. It’s been…interesting to say the least but not actually as difficult as you might think.”  
  
He tilts his head at her a little. “That’s good. Daryl’s been explaining things to you? I’m sure that’s been helpful.”  
  
“It is. He’s been the difference between me feeling like I’m losing my mind and feeling like I have some sort of anchor here. Someone to help me make sense of all this. There are a few things he can’t help with though.”  
  
Rick looks confused and she gives him a wry smile, trying to lighten the mood between them. “He can’t turn the tv back on. Or make a cow appear and churn some butter. Or order a pizza. There are so many little things that I’m not used to not having yet. I know it’s been a long time for all of you but for me, it was almost yesterday.”  
  
He smiles then, nodding in agreement and scratching the spot at his temple. “Tell ya a little secret. It never gets easier. I still want a pizza even now, still wanna order Chinese take out too.”  
  
“Oh no, that’s not promising.”  
  
She gives him an amused frown and he nods. “It’s not. But you’ll get used to it on some level eventually. I can….maybe make the pizza thing a little easier though.”  
  
He gets up from his seat and heads for a cabinet, riffling around inside it and pulling out a little bag of pizza flavored goldfish, setting them down in front of her with a conspiratorial look on his face and she can’t help but gasp dramatically and smile in response.  
  
“You’re sharing your contraband fish with me?”  
  
He nods, nudging the bag across the counter and watching her take a few out and pop them into her mouth. “I am. But this is just between you and me. Been hidin’ them from the others. No one else has to know.”  
  
Carol barely has time to swallow the food in her mouth before half of her is somewhere else, her eyes blank and unseeing as she rattles off her next words. Monotone and low, like a script from a play and she’s taking over both roles.   
  
_“No one else has to know. I thought you were done making decisions for everyone._

_I’m making this decision for me._

_I could have pretended that everything was fine but I didn’t. I did something, I stepped up. I had to do something._

_No you didn’t. ”_  
  
One of her hands is clutching the fabric of her own shirt, curling into it at her chest as she recites the lines she sees playing out in front of her face like a tiny movie.  
  
_“If you think I'm going anywhere without Lizzie and Mica._  
  
_If you want them to leave, to go out there with you? Lizzie's sick. Mica is 10 years old. She can't._

_We'll keep them safe. You're not that woman who was too scared to be alone, not anymore._

_You're gonna start over, find others, people who don't know, and you're gonna survive out here.”_  
  
“Oh god.” She can see Rick in her rearview mirror as she drives away and then all of her is back in the kitchen again, looking right at his face while he stares back at her in horror. Partly like he can’t quite believe what he just heard and partly like she’s a freak of nature. He doesn’t say anything though, just waits for her to say or do something else, maybe uncertain if the spell is broken yet and she takes a few moments to gather herself.  
  
“You kicked me out. Of where I don’t know yet, but you…sent me away. Why?”  
  
Her voice is level and calm and Rick looks at her like she kicked him in the balls. “You remember all that? Just now?”  
  
“Some of it. Not the whole thing or I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?”  
  
That part comes out sharper than she intended but she doesn’t soften it for him and it seems to poke him enough that he actually gives her an answer.   
  
“You did something and I over reacted. I shouldn’t have done that, it was wrong of me but at the time I thought it was better if you weren't with the group.”  
  
Her eyebrows raise up as she folds her arms across her chest, her entire manner slightly enraged. “So you send me out there alone? Isn’t that a death sentence? A woman by herself, Jesus Rick. What the hell could I have done that would make you think that was ever ok?”  
  
“You sure you don’t wanna ask Daryl about this?”  
  
She sucks in a hard breath, shaking her head and fixing him with a strong glare. “I’m asking you.”  
  
It takes him a moment to reply and she almost thinks maybe he won’t. That she’ll have to badger it out of him until he finally caves but then he hangs his head and complies, looking regretful and like every word burns his tongue. “You killed people. There was a flu at the prison…that’s where we were staying. They were the first ones infected and you killed them.”  
  
Carol turns his words over a few times, trying to makes them sound less insane than they already do because surely she didn’t kill anyone and if she did then she must have had a good fucking reason and then she remembers one of her dreams and thinks some of the pieces might be trying to fall into place.  
  
“Was there fire? Did I burn their bodies?”  
  
Rick nods and despite how inappropriate it is she feels a huge sense of relief flood over her at the ability to figure something out. To take that scene and put it somewhere where it fits and she probably looks like a crazy person for having that reaction but the relief quickly fades when she realizes what she’s done, her face falling and then Rick is trying to fix something that he broke himself.  
  
“They were sick already. They weren’t gonna make it…It was a mercy for them and you were trying to help the group.”  
  
Suddenly she's irritated all over again at the way he’s trying to justify her actions to her when apparently they hadn’t been justifiable when they happened, but the last thing she wants is this person she doesn’t even know telling her she did the right thing.   
  
“You think I don’t know that? If I killed them I did it because I felt I had to. Felt it was right. A lot may have changed in fifteen years, Rick, but I wasn’t a cold blooded murderer then and I’m not one now. So you can keep your reassurances to yourself. I don’t need them. I already know who I am.”  
  
He doesn’t seem to know how to react to that, watching her with his mouth half open and a small half smile on his face, his voice soft when he replies. “A lot has changed in fifteen years. I am sorry, for what it’s worth. I hope that we can start over.”  
  
She’s still so angry that it’s difficult to find the words to articulate how she feels. Just wants to wash her hands of the man who sent her off to her death or worse, but then she remembers that she can’t wash her hands of him because they live together and even if they didn’t there is literally no where else for her to go to get permanently away from him.

Maybe that’s just her anger talking, she thinks. She’s never been one to hold a grudge and he’s clearly sorry. Clearly wants to make it right any way he can and while she might not be able to forgive him entirely, moving forward is the only option available.  
  
“Maybe we can. Just gonna take some time, I think.”  
  
Rick sighs and nods and she thinks this conversation might be over but then he’s talking again.   
  
“Daryl knew, but I only told him after you were gone. He wanted to go look for you but we got hit with an attack right after. All of us got separated then, couldn’t go back to the prison. I didn’t tell him before because I knew he’d stop me. I want you to know that you saved all of us. After the prison fell we got trapped somewhere else and you helped us escape.”  
  
“Is that why you took me back? Because I saved you?”  
  
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe at the time. I don’t think that way now though. I know how important you are to this group.”

He wanders out of the kitchen after imparting that last comment. Leaving her with a bag of half eaten goldfish and a new memory that she didn’t want.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Carol spends a lot of time in the kitchen. It’s one of the things she’s noticed about herself over the last couple weeks and she doesn't know why she gravitates to it so often but she supposes with a lack of entertainment elsewhere the kitchen is the most obvious place to land, and that’s where she is when Daryl comes home for the evening. He looks tired and worn out, leaning his bow against the wall and rounding the island to approach her, giving her little peck on the lips that’s far too short for her liking but she lets him drift away again until he’s leaning against the granite.  
  
“How’d the thing go?”  
  
“It went. Never a shortage of shit to put back together around here. Gives me somethin’ to do when I ain’t out on runs. How ‘bout you?”  
  
She sighs, mirroring his pose against the sink. “Talked to Rick today. Had a memory. Talked to Rick about the memory because it involved him and that was all sorts of weird.”  
  
He looks concerned now, his brows creasing as she continues. “I killed people. At the prison. I know you know because he told me. I saw that day when he sent me away, recited the words we said to each other like a fucking robot, he probably thinks I’m possessed now. It was…so strange. I saw the whole thing but the feelings from it are gone. It’s a memory but it’s more like it happened to someone else.”  
  
“I didn’t know he was gonna do that when it happened, I woulda stopped him…”  
  
She smiles softly at him, pursing her lips and shaking her head. “I know. He told me the same thing and even if he didn’t…I know. That wasn’t what bothered me. I was angry at him. I was so goddamn upset that he would just throw me out there to fend for myself. We were supposed to be friends, right? People around here, they keep saying we’re all family. Family doesn’t do that. He apologized, said he was wrong, but shit. I just don’t know anything anymore. Don’t even know how I feel about any of that.”  
  
“Rick was wrong. He makes some shit choices and that was the biggest one. Couldn’t see that you didn’t deserve that and you didn’t. Not one bit.”  
  
He is sincere as he can be but she’s so conflicted that she can barely respond, just shrugs and moves away from the sink, turning her back to him and reaching for a cup in a cabinet, her voice sarcastic with more than a little bite to it. “I don’t know, maybe I did. I kill people now, Daryl. That’s a thing I do. You sure you wanna sleep next to me knowing that?”  
  
It’s a low blow to someone that hasn’t earned it and she instantly feels bad for lashing out at him in even that small way. He’s done nothing but be there for her and she’s letting her frustrations over run her mouth.  
  
She doesn’t get a chance to apologize though because the moment she puts her cup down on the counter she feels his arms wrapping around her waist from behind, his chin resting on her shoulder and she shifts back just enough to put some of her weight against him, her body moving on it’s own, seeking out the heat he offers.  
  
“We all kill people now. That’s how it is, ain’t no gettin’ around it. You’re a good person and you did those people a mercy, they was drowning in their own blood before you ever got to them. Sufferin’. Coulda been just them, we didn’t know. No one else was sick then. I almost threw Rick over the side of a second floor staircase when he told me what he did.”  
  
Somehow the reassurances she hears from him are easy to accept. Easier than anything Rick could have said and maybe she needed them more than she thought because now that the words have sunk into her bones and soothed her nerves she feels herself releasing tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding.   
  
“…and to answer your last question. I always wanna sleep next to you.”  
  
Carol only has to turn her head a fraction of an inch before his lips are against hers, his hands pulling her waist back against him and her fingers curling up into his hair. He tastes like mint and toothpaste and she smiles into his mouth at the thought of him sneaking upstairs first to brush his teeth before he came to find her. Feels her heart swell at the thought of all the little things he does that she’s pretty certain are just for her and she is isn’t sure it would be possible to love him more and that’s when she realizes that she does.   
  
That she loves him with everything she has and everything she can’t reach yet. Wants nothing more than to see his face everyday and grow old together on dual front porch rocking chairs.   
  
“You ok?”   
  
She must have stopped kissing him back as she was having her sudden revelation because he’s pulled away just enough to whisper the words into the space between them and she nods, turning in his arms so she can face him, her eyes watery as she nudges her nose next to his, feeling his chest rise and fall as he breathes in the air she exhales. “I am.”  
  
He doesn’t seem to understand why she’s such a confusing mixture of happiness and shimmering eyes but maybe he gets it enough because he smiles back a second later, pressing her gently against the counter and leaning in to take her bottom lip between both of his and the pressure is so sweet and soft that her eyelids flutter closed and her breath hitches on contact.  
  
“Daryl…take me to bed.”  
  
He gulps hard, his adam’s apple shifting visibly with her low plea and then he’s slipping his palm into hers, giving her a wicked little wink that takes her by surprise and makes a laugh bubble out of her as he leads them up the steps and into their room, the door clicking shut behind them.  
  
They can’t get back to each other fast enough. Colliding in a slightly frantic kiss as she back walks to the bed, stripping her shirt off and helping him out of his and aroused as she is right now they need to slow things down considerably because they aren’t trying to beat any timers here. They have all night and she intends to make good use of it.  
  
The moment she eases them down from an almost bruising kiss into something as gentle as they had in the kitchen she can feel him sighing into her lips, his body sagging into hers while she flits her fingers up his sides in a light touch.  
  
Shoes are gone right along with pants a few moments later, landing in a pile together and after some suitably hilarious hopping around and shared laughter as they try to exit their restrictive clothing it’s just him in his boxers and her in her panties and they melt into the bed easily.

Carol doesn’t give him time to over think anything, knows he’s prone to that so she gives him subtle but clear instructions with her hands and body, showing him where she wants him as her head falls back against the pillows and her firm grip tugs his hips into the cradle of her thighs.   
  
He’s already hard and throbbing and she can feel it against her center, causing her to arch up into him and seek out friction that they shouldn’t be chasing with fabric still between them. Eliciting a hiss from Daryl and a shiver from her own body because just that brief contact was enough to send sparks through her veins.  
  
“You keep doin’ that I ain’t gonna last long enough to make it outta these boxers.”  
  
He’s self deprecating but light as he says it, resting his forehead along hers and she offers an obvious solution. “We should probably handle that now then.”  
  
Her hands are tracing the rim of his boxers, pushing them down and he takes over from there, tossing them across the room and raising a brow to her in a silent question, asking if it’s her turn now and she raises her hips up for him in reply, letting him slide the cotton panties down her legs and hearing them land in the same direction he threw his own. Their little pile of clothing finally complete.  
  
Then it’s just them. Skin to skin with their bodies pressed so tightly to each other she doesn't think there’s any space between them at all from collarbone to hip. All she can think of is how badly she wants to feel him inside her and she tilts her hips to feel the length of him slide along her center, getting a harsh groan in her ear and a firm hand at her thigh.   
  
She doesn’t want foreplay, maybe later, but not now. Not when she craves this connection more than anything else and she’s pretty sure she’s more than wet enough judging by the way he’s sliding the underside of his cock through her warmth, coating himself in her arousal and maybe he just knows that she’s barely hanging on from a thread already because the next thing she feels is him pressing gently against her entrance, pausing there a few seconds and letting her feel the pressure and it’s enough to have her sucking in air hard enough to make her light headed.  
  
Her lips part automatically when she feels him push in, just enough to stretch those muscles at the forefront and despite their rambunctious actives the last time it still burns just enough at first that this time it’s her hissing through her teeth instead of him.   
  
She expects him to keep going but he doesn’t, just stops there, locking eyes with her for several beats and then he’s moving just enough that she can feel him inching in little by little. Slowly filling her while he watches her face and it’s so intimate that the desire to look away and hold his gaze is equally strong.

This may be the second time they’ve been together but it feels like the first in so many ways.  
  
Only when he’s gone as far as he can does he stop and wait, giving her a shy smile and running a hand over her face, fingers tracing her brow, down her temple and along her jawline before coming to rest on the side of her neck.   
  
Then he’s kissing her again, slow and sweet and moving his hips in a gentle rhythm and its more than she thought she could feel, more than she knew she wanted in the first place but now that she’s experienced it she’ll never be able to go without again.   
  
He’s heavy and thick inside her, the tip of him curving up just enough to provide a steady but firm massage right where she needs it, caressing that spot on her front wall over and over again in a way that makes her both want to clench her thighs against his hips and spread them wide as she can.

It’s an unexpected sensation because he barely leaves her at all, his thrusts are deep and gradual, like he can’t bear to separate them even for a moment but it’s that intense, heavy motion that has her moaning into his mouth and hooking her legs high on his hips, feeling a wave of pleasure cascade over her that she isn't prepared for. Curling her toes and lifting her back off the mattress and he just keeps going, moving with her, letting her ride it out while she clutches his arms in a vice grip.   
  
She isn’t sure how long it lasts, that repetitive clenching and coiling of all her muscles, spilling out in rings of pleasure from her center but when she finally starts to come down from it she realizes he hasn’t gotten there yet and the look of determination on his face when she pulls back enough to see him tells her that it's been a concentrated and likely difficult effort.  
  
She’s sensitive in the aftermath of her orgasm but she wants to feel his too and urges him to find it, pulling him in for a deep kiss and suddenly those gentle strokes are a little less gentle and a little bit faster as he chases his own climax, hitting a spot inside her that makes her gasp in surprise because if he did that for a while longer she thinks she might be able to come again but that’s for another time because he’s shuddering and contracting against her a moment later, filling her with the warm wetness of his release.  
  
It takes them both a minute to catch their breath but when he rolls to the side and pulls her to him, snugging the blankets up to their shoulders to chase away the chill left behind by cooling skin she smiles at his first comment, delivered in a hopeful way with his voice low in her ear.   
  
“So don’t fall asleep? Because you ain’t done with me yet?”  
  
“It’s like you know me.”  
  
His arm flexes around her, tightening for a second before loosening again. “Maybe a little bit.”  



	13. Chapter 13

Daryl wakes to the whisper of hair against his face and a warm hand wrapped around his cock. He’s already responsive before he’s fully alert, hardening a little bit more with every soft, slow stroke of the nimble fingers encircling him and his first rational thought despite the need to buck into that hand is to bolt away from it. He flies back quick enough to rip himself away from the warmth and then there’s several feet between him and who now sees is Carol and he’s practically teetering off the side of the bed in a blind panic.  
  
“Shit, I’m sorry…didn’t know it was you.”  
  
It sounds stupid the moment he says it. Who else would be in bed with him trying to coax him to hardness in the early morning hours, but she only looks concerned and hesitant now instead of ready to mock his response, which in his disoriented state he’d almost been ready for.  
  
“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, I wasn’t thinking. I just thought we could go for round two before breakfast.”  
  
Her voice is gentle and calming and he tries not to notice the way it bleeds with concern and just a little bit of guilt for having caused him such a ridiculous reaction. Can feel his breathing start to return to normal again and when he scoots back into the middle with her she doesn’t even touch him without asking first, hovering her hand over his arm and waiting for permission and jesus he fucked up because it’s not her fault he’s screwed in the head when it comes to people touching him, especially if it catches him off guard like that. Especially if he doesn’t know it’s her.  
  
He grants her request quickly, nodding and feeling her hand rub over his bicep while he falls back into the pillow again, the side of his head sinking down into the cotton fabric so he can face her and mirror her position.   
  
“You’re ok.”   
  
Her words wash over him as she leans up onto her elbow and breaths them into his temple, running her palm over the round of his shoulder and down to his elbow in repetitive motions and all earlier feelings of fear and confusion ebb away quickly, being replaced by something else that more closely resembles the lust that was there for that brief moment when he’d thought about leaning into her attentions instead of away from them.  
  
“I blow my chances at round two?”  
  
Her teeth catch on her bottom lip, biting it until it pinks and she shakes her head, leaning in for a  kiss and the feel of her mouth slanting against his coaxes his cock back to alertness in record time.   
  
She’s hesitant to touch him again though and he brought that on himself, but rather than encourage it he decides to focus on her instead. Letting one hand trace her hip and dip over her lower belly, going further at a snails pace until he can feel the soft skin between her legs parting for him like a flower’s petals. She’s hooking a leg over his hip a moment later, giving him better access and it never stops surprising him how receptive she is. That she wants him to touch her. That he has permission to travel to such intimate places and that doing so makes her breath catch and her lips part along his.

She’s already slick, ready and waiting for him and he sinks a finger inside her up to the second knuckle, feeling her rock her hips so the heel of his hand is brushing the exact place she wants it to be.   
  
Daryl wants to get her there first with his fingers, maybe his mouth if she’ll let him but he only gets to pump that digit a dozen times or so before she’s whispering into his mouth that she needs him, pressing herself further into his space and trapping his hand between them and he removes the now coated finger to replace it with his cock instead. Feeling her gently, slowly reach down to help guide him to the right place, giving him time to realize what she’s doing, likely worried he might bolt again but that’s the last thing on his mind and then she's tugging him up into her, removing her hand so he can do the rest and he wastes no time sliding in until he reaches his limit. Setting a quick but gentle pace and loving the way she keeps trying to arch her hips a little further so he can reach a little deeper. It makes him feel wanted. Needed.  
  
This position, on their sides face to face, gives him the advantage of being close to her without hovering over her at the same and the equal footing makes them work together toward their respective ends. No one is dominant here. Hips nudge together and lips find each other in lazy, repetitive connections and it’s a level playing field in every sense of the concept.  
  
“Daryl….I need…”  
  
She’s close but she can’t get there yet. He can tell by the frustration on her face and the wetness coating his cock. Signals that conflict with each other so clearly. “Tell me.”  
  
She shows him instead, dragging his hand down between them and pressing a finger to a specific spot, encouraging him to circle it and he takes direction well. Making her writhe and tremble and clench around him only moments later, her response telling him he did something right and giving him permission to get there himself. The last few spasms that roll through her and tighten around the base of him are hard enough to trigger his own release and he leans into it, pressing his face to the curve of her neck and spilling himself inside her for the second time in less than a day.   
  
This is the best way he’s ever woken up.  
  
  
  
  
  
He’s been avoiding Denise. Not wanting to talk about all the recent developments between him and Carol. Half because it feels like a betrayal and half because he isn’t even sure how or where to start. He wants to talk though, feels like he needs more than a little guidance on how to avoid fucking all this up because he’s still out of his depth with his sudden good fortune.  
  
Daryl has what he’s wanted most and knowing his luck he’ll do something to drive her away if he’s not careful. It still worries at him even now. This fear that she’ll wake up one morning and decide this isn't what she wants anymore. That it’s been fun and she likes him but they aren’t meant to be anything permanent. Or worse, that she’ll wake up and remember every little thing and along with not wanting to be with him, she’ll pull away for other reasons too. Reasons related to dead people and hard choices and everything else that had been plaguing her since after the prison.  
  
He should be past this by now, he thinks. Something has changed between them and even he isn’t blind to it. The way she looks at him now is different. The way they have sex is different compared to that first time, and he can’t help but think that maybe a part of her is falling for him as much as he’s already fallen for her.   
  
He already knows that she’s decided she wants more than just sex, but her version of what more is hadn’t actually been clear to him. It’s still early, he thinks. Only a few weeks at most. Has to keep reminding himself that for her it’s brand new, so much more than it is for him.   
  
He’s being more of a woman about this than the woman is and he almost laughs at himself for overthinking every fucking detail right down to the goddamn sheets.  
  
Denise will have some advice. She always does and even though he thinks telling her everything might not be the best idea, he needs to tell her enough to get some direction before he stresses himself into a seizure.  
  
That’s what he’s pondering when he enters the medical area, ready to spill his thoughts to his therapist only to find her already talking to Tobin. They look up to see him enter, a smile on Denise’s face and a scowl on Tobin’s while she hands him a bottle of what looks like tylenol.  
  
Daryl backtracks a step, ready to leave them be and come back later but Tobin stops him.   
  
“Wait, it’s good we ran into each other. Been wanting to talk to you about something.”  
  
This can’t be good at all and Daryl wants no part of this conversation, shakes his head and turns further but the other man is insistent.  
  
“It’s about Carol.”  
  
“What about her?” He can’t ignore that so he doesn’t. Just waits for an answer and Tobin looks annoyed already.  
  
“I think you know.”  
  
“I don’t. You’re gonna haveta spell out whatever the fuck you’re tryin’ to say right now.”  
  
Tobin shifts in place, sending a glance to Denise who looks horrified at the entire situation and backs up to the other side of the room to remove herself from the whole thing.  
  
“Didn’t plan on doing this with other people around but I think…what’s happening with you and her isn’t right. She’s vulnerable now and you’re taking advantage in every way possible.”  
  
“Oh shit…” It’s Denise’s voice, barely a whisper across the room as she covers her mouth and looks torn between stepping in front of the two men or running out the door but Daryl can’t be bothered with her right now because this asshole is implying a whole lotta bullshit that doesn’t need to come out of his mouth.  
  
“The hell did you just say to me?”  
  
Tobin is instantly placating, raising his hands up like he’s about to protect his face and he fucking better because Daryl is already stalking toward him, stopping only a foot away, ready to hear something that might convince him not to beat his face in but not feeling hopeful either.   
  
“I just meant that it’s only been a short time. She doesn’t know any of you anymore…and you’re already sleeping with her like you have permission now. Don’t you think that if she wanted that…the real Carol…that she would have done it already? I mean, you spent years together.”  
  
Daryl isn’t sure if any part of that was supposed to be a backtrack but it sure as fuck didn’t sound like one and he can barely contained the rage that he feels at the very idea of him taking advantage of Carol. Of using her memory lapse as permission to do anything she doesn’t want. His voice comes out hard and agitated, the words biting off at the ends sharp enough that there’s an audible click. “I ain’t takin’ advantage of her, you sick fuck. It’s not like that and how the hell is it any of your business what she does? Because she ain’t with you now? That it?”  
  
Tobin has the good sense to look scared for his own well being, leaning his front half away from Daryl and into the wall at his back but his next words don’t help his case whatsoever. “Come on, man. Who do you really think she’d chose if she was her again? You? What do you have to offer her?”  
  
“Last I checked we all got the same shit to offer anyone. No class divisions anymore, ‘cept in  _your_  head. You bother her again and you and I are gonna do more than talk. You got it?”  
  
“Don’t you think she should be the one to make that choice?”  
  
Daryl can’t keep his voice level anymore and his response comes out in a bellow, echoing through out the small room and making Denise shrink back. “ _She already has!_ ”  
  
He doesn’t wait for a response, just turns on his heels and leaves the house, hearing Denise calling to him from the porch and begging him to come back and talk to her but she doesn’t follow him and he doesn’t stop. He’s too enraged to talk to anyone. Not Denise, not Carol, and certainly not any of these other fuckers, so he does the only thing he can do. Heads up to the tower and tells the person inside to take a break and sits watch for the rest of the afternoon. Which gives him plenty of time to think and maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all because all he can think of now is how that asshole might have been right.  
  
Not that he was taking advantage of Carol, he knows that’s not true but the other parts he isn’t so sure of. Weather he knew it or not Tobin had hit on one of Daryl’s biggest insecurities. Not being good enough.   
  
It’s easy for him to believe that Carol would chose Tobin over him. He was right when he said they’d spent years together with no forward movement in their relationship. Why should Daryl think that what they have now is anything but a positive side effect of her memory loss.   
  
If she didn’t want him then…if she was actively seeking out Tobin now and he thinks she might have been…why should he believe that it’s him she really wants.  
  
He wants to think that all of this has been a well timed nudge, something they needed to get them going in the right direction. That they would have ended up here anyway regardless, but years of doubting himself is hard to overcome and he struggles with it.  
  
Denise had told him to trust himself and trust Carol and he does but he thinks maybe it’s his heart that does the trusting while his brain is off doing other things, like doubting every interaction they’ve had since her accident.  
  
  
  
  
  
When he returns to the house later that day, intent on finding Carol and talking out some of these issues with her she isn’t in the kitchen or the bedroom. A search of the bathrooms comes up empty and when he finally tries her room his heart leaps into his throat at the sight of a half full duffle bag on the bed. He approaches it slowly, like it might bite him but it lays there innocently as he tilts it up to see non perishable food and other supplies inside, his eyes flitting to the side to spy a notebook on the bed and he instantly reaches for it, scanning the pages and letting the words sink in and with every passing letter his heart crumples up and dies just a little bit more.   
  
The final passage is the one that sinks a nail in the coffin.   
  
A half written good bye note from Carol to the group.  
  



	14. Chapter 14

Daryl’s lost track of how long he’s been sitting in her room. On the bed reading over her journal like a fucking creep. It’s private and he knows that, but after flicking through the pages in a cursory fashion and seeing the note at the back he hadn’t been able to help himself. Regrets it already, feels guilty and wrong and like he’s violating her privacy which he clearly is.   
  
It’s a chance to find out what had been bothering her though, and since even she doesn’t know at this point, her journal is his only option and every word sucks him in a little further than the last. Painting a stark reality of all the horrors that plagued her before the accident. It’s more than just a convoluted kill list, which he’d had trouble figuring out but eventually deciphered. It’s an example of someone devolving right there on paper.    
  
From the first entry, still semi hopeful even if only just barely, to the last one that detailed her plans to leave. Right down to stealing Tobin’s jacket and hoarding food items little by little so no one would notice them missing.    
  
That was before he’d reached the good bye note. Before she penned it. Half undone, waiting for her to put the finishing touches on ripping his heart straight out of his chest. He doesn’t know when she’d written it. If it was today or three weeks ago. If she stopped because she couldn’t get it right or if she changed her mind.   
  
There are mentions of him in here too. Peppered through out the entries in ways that both confirm all his hopes of how she might have felt about him and also break them at the same time because clearly it hadn’t been enough.    
  
The thing is, he can’t blame her either. He knows now what she had to do between the time he last saw her at the prison and when they found each other again after terminus and he can’t imagine a greater horror, especially to someone who’d already lost a child of her own and everything else, all those other bullet points in her trips down guilt lane had to have wrapped so snugly around that moment in the grove that she could barely breath without it strangling her.    
  
Of course she felt like she had to go. He only wished he’d done more before it came to that.   
  
Daryl has the closed notebook clutched tightly in his hands when she finds him. Looking surprised to see him there but not upset and then her eyes fall on the item he holds and the duffle bag on the bed and she seems to understand why he’s slumped down into the mattress like it’s sucking him into a deep dark hole. Why his fingers tremble at the edges of the paper and his eyes hold more questions than he knows how to ask.   
  
He’s relieved to see her but hadn’t expected that she’d already left, so it’s less of a shock and more of reminder that it could still happen.   
  
“Did you read it?”   
  
She asks him as she crosses the room to sit down on the bed, curling one leg up and letting the other dangle off the side while she faces him and he nods, looking just as guilty as he feels but she isn’t giving him the reaction he expected.   
  
“Good. I’ve been reading it all day…just sitting here looking at something I wrote myself but can’t remember holding the pen. ”   
  
“You leavin’?” It’s the most important question and he has to ask it first. Can’t move forward with any sort of conversation until he knows if he’ll have to chase after her outside these walls or if she’s staying within them.   
  
“What? No…” She’s confused, like it’s an odd thing to ask her but then she seems to get it, her face falling and one hand snaking out to catch his cheek and turn it toward her. “…oh…no, I’m not leaving. I was…I guess I was before all this, but I just found all this stuff here. The duffle under the bed and the notebook in the bottom drawer and I’ve been trying to figure it all out. Been in this room going over my own words again and again, but I’m not leaving. I promise.”   
  
Daryl lets out a strangled breath, feeling it shutter in the exhale and doesn’t think he’s ever been more relieved about anything in his life. Can’t help but lean his face into her open palm and shut his eyes for the briefest of moments, letting her promise sink in until it sounds true.   
  
“I went out to the back porch for a while, had to think. Didn’t expect anyone to come up here and now I’ve probably almost given you a stroke thinking I was about to pack up and run away. I’m not though. I need you believe me when I say that.”   
  
He nods, feeling her lean back and give him a little space, searching his face for indications that he does in fact believe her and difficult as it is not to hold onto that fear of losing her he forces himself to remember that she wouldn’t lie to him. Wouldn’t keep something like this from him. Not anymore. “I believe you.”   
  
Carol points to the book he still holds. “Did you know about that? The girls? I can’t tell from this if I told anyone or not.”   
  
“No. I knew somethin’ happened. Knew it was eating away at you but you didn’t wanna talk about it and I didn’t know how to help. You and I, we don’t push each other. We didn’t…maybe now we do.”   
  
She reaches over, slender fingers brushing his as she takes the book from him and opens to a page, scanning the words and shaking her head. She doesn’t speak the passage out loud but he can see her eyes moving from side to side as she reads it, her expression frustrated and tired.    
  
“She was so far gone…it was too much. The other things, they were terrible but not like this. She said it consumed her and I can see why….but I can’t feel it, Daryl. I read these words and a part of me wants to feel guilty for what I’ve done because I killed a child. But…I can’t connect to it, either. Maybe that’s a good thing.”   
  
He looks up at that, seeing her bite her lip and crease her brows, watching him for his reaction. “What do you mean?”   
  
“I mean that maybe I don’t want to remember. All I’ve been doing since the accident is hoping I’ll get back everything I lost. That I’ll be me again…but now I’m not so sure I want that anymore. The person who wrote these entries, I’m not her and I don’t think I wanna be. She was so lost…so impossibly overrun by sadness and guilt and does it make me a bad person to want to leave that behind now? To not want any of it back again? Even when I do remember things it’s like I’m watching it happen to someone else. I’m not…there. I’m only now realizing that this disconnection might be a blessing in disguise.”   
  
“Don’t make you a bad person at all. It’s ok if you don’t wanna remember.”   
  
“Is it, though? What kind of person just shucks all of their sins like that? I may not remember doing these things but I did them. Maybe I don’t deserve to be let off the hook so easily.”   
  
He sighs, getting the poorly timed urge to smile at her because that line of thought is more  _her_  than even she knows. The desire to suffer for all her self perceived misdeeds runs deep, even now. “Hey…you said it yourself. You ain’t her no more, not really. So you gotta remember that the Carol who wrote this did it from the point of view of someone who was convinced she was wrong. But that don’t mean she was. You get a chance now to see this from a different angle. You know what happened and why and you can separate yourself from it. So tell me…was it really the wrong choice?”   
  
She takes a moment to think over his question, her lips pursing and her fingers fidgeting until finally she shakes her head. Half in defeat and half in acceptance. “No. It wasn’t wrong. That girl…she was sick. It was the only way. I think I knew that even then or I wouldn’t have done it. God, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been…it’s hard now just knowing it happened and I don’t even remember holding the gun. I should have talked to you about it. I think I wanted to…there are parts in there that make me think I almost did a few times but…I wasn’t winning any awards for handling my emotional distress in the best ways. As evidence by the well planned escape I had in the works. Don’t know if I was even going through with it though. There’s pages missing in here, torn out like I wrote the note several times and couldn’t get it right. Maybe I changed my mind?”   
  
“Maybe. I hope so. We’re talking about it now though, and you ain’t running away anymore. That’s what matters. I told you once we get to start over, maybe that’s more true now than it ever was.”   
  
“I want to.”    
  
Her reply comes out barely a whisper, honest and level and soothing his frayed nerves. “Then we will.”   
  
That earns him a soft smile and suddenly her fingers are wrapping around his, pulling his hand into her lap and holding it in a snug grip and she looks like she has something else to tell him and that maybe it’s not something bad because her earlier apprehension has been replaced with a sort of excited wonderment.   
  
“I did remember something else though. Earlier today when I was having lunch, it just…snuck up on me.”   
  
Daryl can feel his heart speed up, pounding off his ribcage in a harsh rhythm and he’s both curious and terrified to find out what memory she’d dredged up. “What?”   
  
“You. It was you. Giving me a flower in a beer bottle and telling me a beautiful story.”    
  
He doesn’t know what to say, so overcome with relief that she’s remembered something good about them but he doesn’t have time to reply because she’s smiling wide, all teeth and nose wrinkles and telling him what happened next and he’s smiling right back before he knows what he’s doing. His own memories of these moments washing over him at the same time her words do.     
  
“…that’s not all either…I had another one right after. We were in the woods and you ran at me full speed and hugged me so hard…lifted me off my feet. We were so happy to see each other…I can still feel the way your hair got caught on my eyelashes.”    
  
Her thumb strokes soft circles across the skin of his hand and he watches her do it, following the motion with his eyes and trying not to fall apart right there in front of her at knowing that she has these moments back. That a part of her still knows him.    
  
He can barely look at her when he replies, too afraid that the emotions threatening to take over will do just that and his voice is low and catching despite his best efforts. “That was a good day.”   
  
“Yeah, it was. You know, I didn’t think it would happen. That I would get back anything good because all I kept seeing were awful, terrible things, but it is…Daryl, it’s happening.”   
  
He can’t stop the torrent of reactions and they reach for each other at the same time, arms wrapping around one another and the feel of her warm breath on the side of his neck as she pulls him close. His forehead finding her shoulder and his hands tightening against her waist and he lets impulse overrun him and pulls her into his lap. She lets out a surprised sound, not expecting the sudden movement but she doesn’t fight it either, straddling him with one knee on either side of his hips while her arms stay tight around his neck.    
  
There’s nothing sexual about this. A moment doesn’t pass without him wanting her but right now all he needs is to be close and maybe she needs it too because she clings to him in much the same way.    
  
They spend the rest of the afternoon in that bedroom, eventually moving back against the pillows but staying close as he tells her his version of her newest memories.    
  
  
  
  
  
It’s four days later when Carol sees Daryl and Rick carrying an unconscious man from the car to Denise’s house. His limbs dangling and head falling to the side as they cart him through the doorway and she’s more than a little curious what’s happening there because far as she knows they’d gone on a supply run earlier that day and only the two of them left the gates.    
  
She doesn’t follow though, thinking that once he emerges again and heads home she can poke and prod and get some answers about this unfortunate person and it doesn’t take long for Daryl to speed walk away with Rick hot on his heels.    
  
“You didn’t have hit his head on the door jamb.”   
  
“He didn’t have to be such a prick.” Daryl’s reply is snarky and quick and she arches a brow from her spot on the porch swing as they approach, Rick giving her a nod and telling Daryl they’ll go back for the truck tomorrow before he disappears inside the house.    
  
The swing dips as Daryl lowers himself next to her, spreading his legs out and leaning his head back and looking for all the world like he’s had the worst day in the history of bad days and his dramatics amuse her. “So…how’d it go out there? Saw you brought home a stray.”   
  
“Pfft. That asshole is lucky I didn’t tie him up in a tree and leave him there.”   
  
“Oh no. Sounds serious, what’d this fucker do?”   
  
He snorts at her attempt at commiserating, her language giving away the effort but she gives herself a point anyway, patting her lap and indicating he should shift around and rest his head there and he takes the invitation without further prompting. Pulling his legs up onto the swing, which has more than enough room if he bends them, and dropping his head onto her thighs. Letting her stroke the soft hair away from his eyes while he tells her exactly what happened on their ill fated supply run.   
  
“…then he just ran up on us outta the blue, literally ran into me. Tied him up but he escaped like some sorta fucking ninja and climbed up on the truck….then he stole the damn thing and when we caught up with him made me chase him around a goddamn field in a bunch of circles, he’s faster than he looks.”   
  
She has one hand covering her mouth in attempt not to laugh at the description because thinking of Daryl chasing around anyone, all flustered and irritated is pretty damn hilarious and the way his hands are waving around as he tells the story doesn’t help matters in the slightest.    
  
“…and then, he sinks the truck full of shit we need into a lake. Gone.”   
  
She continues trailing a repetitive path through his hair, fingers running lightly over his scalp and he shivers at her touch even as he remembers another important point to relay. “That ain’t even the best part. Asshole calls himself Jesus. You believe that? What a douche.”   
  
“You sure that’s not his name? I know he’s not  _Jesus_ , but it’s not unheard of for people to name their kids that.” He cuts her a glare and she backtracks. “I’m just saying…”   
  
“I’m sure. Said his name was Paul but we could call him Jesus. It’s a choice. A douchy choice. Does sorta look like him I guess…but that ain’t the point.”   
  
He’s slowly losing his bluster about this encounter as he purges his irritations and she smiles down at him, letting her other hand absently flutter along his chest. “That sounds like quite the day you’ve had. Supplies gained and lost. New friends acquired. I’m glad you’re back safe after all that.”   
  
“Me too.”    
  
Carol wants to lean down and kiss him but the angle is weird and she can’t crunch herself over enough to comfortably reach so settles for linking their hands, watching his eyelids slide closed and she turns her head at just right moment to see through the thin curtains and get an eyeful of Rick and Michonne on the sofa, making out like lust filled teenagers.   
  
“Oh…oh my god. I didn’t know they were…oh shit, I shouldn’t be watching this. Stop me.”   
  
Daryl sits up just enough to follow her gaze and then his own face is scrunching up in mild disgust and slight fascination, his mouth hanging open in shock. “I didn’t know either. Fuck, why can’t I look away. Make it stop.”   
  
“I can’t…just…lay back down.” She presses on his chest and it takes a healthy push to tear his eyes away from the sight in front of them and then his head is back in her lap while her own face is still pointed directly at the scene in question until his fingers gently tilt it back toward him.   
  
They stare at each other for a few beats, uncertain in the wake of what they’d just seen, before she breaks the silence.   
  
“Good for them, right? Why not?”   
  
He nods to her, the motion soft against her thigh. “Yeah. Sure. Could work. Shit, I feel so conflicted right now.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
One of his hands reaches up to graze her cheek, sliding down the side of her neck and tracing her collarbone, stopping just short of landing on a soft breast in full view of the general population of Alexandria. “Because he’s like my brother and yeah, good for him…but I really want ‘em to go upstairs so I can take _you_  upstairs. Right now.”   
  
Her breath hitches at his words and she lets out a frustrated sigh. “Oh thank god, because I was thinking the same thing. We’re stuck out here now until they move and this isn’t exactly where I wanna be anymore.”   
  
“Where do you wanna be?” He shifts a little, just enough that his face is pressing dangerously close to very sensitive places and she has to struggle to keep herself from clenching her thighs together to relieve the ache. Or worse, from tilting her hips up and pulling him in harder.    
  
“I think you know.”   
  
“Fuck. I’m gonna go in there and drag their asses up the damn steps in a minute.”   
  
She laughs then, keeping her voice low to avoid alerting the others. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you have a happy ending to this awful day. Even if we have to wait a while.”   
  
The visible gulp he makes at her words has her shifting in her spot but then he’s holding back a laugh of his own, having realized her pun. “Did you just say happy ending?”   
  
“Stop. I’ll push you off this swing. Go with it ok.”   
  
“Ok ok. Goin’ with it.”   
  
They’re stuck on the porch for at least half an hour before Rick and Michonne finally make their way up the steps and they waste no time in trailing up themselves soon after, making a bee line for the bedroom and Carol, true to her word, follows through on that promise for a happy ending.


	15. Chapter 15

“He said what?”  
  
Denise winces, looking regretful for Tobin’s awful timing and terrible reaction to her being with Daryl. Carol can barely believe that the altercation she just heard described to her actually happened…over her no less, but apparently there had been an _‘incident’_  that involved Tobin telling Daryl he wasn’t good enough for her.  
  
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s over and done with by now though. Just felt like you needed to know that our resident plaid man was pretty serious about his courting of you.”  
  
She huffs. “If you can call that courting. Daryl knows it’s not true. He knows I’m with him…Tobin doesn't need me to tell him to back off he already got the message loud and clear and besides, he’s not what I’m worried about anyway. I’m more concerned that apparently I’m a walking psychopath.”  
  
That earns her a head shake from Denise and a matter of fact reply that she’d already been expecting. “I think you’re over thinking it. And you’re not a psycopath.”  
  
Carol scowls at Denise from over the rim of her cup, hot steam billowing out from the tea within it. “What else do you call someone that can so easily justify such terrible things? It feels too…simple. Who does that?”  
  
“You wanna say fifty hail mary’s and call me in the morning?”  
  
“Pfft. No. I’m not religious. Mary can’t help me with this. These things they should…effect me more than they do. Why aren’t they?”  
  
It’s been three days since she found her own diary and all the hidden secrets within it and when people say that time heals all wounds that can’t be entirely true, because time also provides plenty of chances to over analyze every possible angle of her situation and one thing she knows for certain is that she shouldn’t be this fucking happy after everything she’d done. This world isn’t made for happy people living happy lives and to let herself slot into it so easily, this new life she’s forming here with Daryl by her side…it feels like a life she hasn’t earned.  
  
Denise isn’t so convinced though, shrugging at her from her own rocking chair and lifting up her right arm, waving it in the air dramatically with a frown. “I broke this when I was seventeen.”  
  
Carol squints at her, unsure of where this is going but willing to find out. “That sounds awful.”  
  
“Exactly. To you it  _sounds_  awful. You can form an appropriate amount of sympathy for my long ago broken limb but you don’t know how bad it hurt when it happened. You can’t hear the sound the bone made as it cracked into two pieces. You never felt the frustration of wearing a cast for six weeks or having phantom itches you can’t scratch inside it. When I tell you I broke my arm, it sounds awful to you, but to me I get all those things for the briefest of moments when I remember the incident. Do you see what I’m saying? You and your memories are no different. They may as well have happened to someone else for all the details you don’t have surrounding them. That’s probably why it’s so _‘easy’_ , as you put it, to accept them and try to move on.”  
  
She has to admit it makes at least a little sense when she phrases it that way. A memory without any details is a shell of a thing, showing her a picture but giving her no story along with it. Except that hadn’t been true for all of them and Denise deserves all of the facts if she has any hope of helping Carol figure out her own head.  
  
“The first ones I had. In the woods? About my dead husband and Daryl…I felt those. They hit me so hard I actually fell over. Then the latest ones too…about the flower and the hug…they aren’t just snapshots they’re full memories. I feel them. I get those details. Why them but not the others?”  
  
“Well, considering I don’t know everything about what you found in that diary…and I’m not saying you need to tell me, that’s your choice and I respect it, but all these things you can’t connect to…the little girl, Rick leaving you behind, whatever was in that diary…good or bad, the ones you felt may not have held a candle to the trauma the other ones inflicted and maybe your own mind doesn’t trust you to handle them yet. We do that sometimes, try and protect ourselves from what hurts too much.”  
  
Carol sighs, rocking a little harder in her chair and wrapping both hands around her mug. “So you’re saying I’m not connecting to them because I don’t want to. That it's too much and I’m doing this to myself?”  
  
“Maybe. That could also be why you haven’t remembered anything else yet. Because honestly…you should have. In most cases if all someone’s memories are going to come back they have by now, but yours have just sort of remained semi stagnant. But you want my advice on this?”  
  
Carol nods, she does want it. Desperately and eagerly.   
  
“Just go with it. Don’t dig around in your head trying to open old wounds. You have no idea how many people around here would trade their left nut for a chance to get rid of the horrors they’ve felt since the turn. Embrace it. It’s a gift.”  
  
She knows that Denise speaks the truth but try as she might she can’t accept this gift yet. Especially when it comes at such a harsh price. “I might never remember my daughter again. I don’t know if embracing the ability to forget the bad things is worth never knowing her at all.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s the thing isn’t it. Can’t have both, at least I don’t think so. Odds are, you start getting most things back and you’ll get it all. Good, bad, terrible. Need to decide if it’s worth the risk to try and unblock what you’re blocking, or if you’d rather just…move forward. Because you could. You have that option now. Gotta say, I’m voting for moving forward and maybe even being happy? I know, I know, it’s a weird concept. Happiness. Don’t be so eager to get the the bad memories back though, it’s not like you don’t have plenty of time to live in a world that'll give you more.”  
  
Carol snorts out a sarcastic laugh, cutting a glare to Denise at that last comment. “Gee thanks. Inspirational. Maybe you’re right though. Maybe I need to stop trying to knock down the wall and just be glad it’s there.”  
  
Denise nods, giving her a pat on the arm and telling her she needs to drag Daryl over for dinner tomorrow because Tara is making mac and cheese and even though she substitutes something else for the cheese…and no one knows what, it still comes out pretty damn good and Carol agrees. Thinks faux mac and cheese night at their house sounds relatively fun and easy and exactly like what they need to do when he gets back from the impromptu run he left for this morning. Some place called the Hilltop, the home of Jesus and they didn’t even have to see him on a piece of toast to get directions. Daryl, Rick and a few others followed him up the mountain earlier that morning, and while she doesn’t know why yet, she knows she’s worried already. That’s another problem for another conversation though and she only nods to Denise and leaves her chair, heading for the steps with a quick wave, intent on making the short walk back to her house where she can attempt to put together something that looks like a casserole all on her own. She’d gotten better at that over the last few weeks and it’s something she can do that doesn’t involved talking her emotions to death with Denise or pestering Olivia at the pantry.   
  
Plus, Daryl is always hungry after an outing and she finds she likes feeding him. Maybe that makes her domestic but if it does so be it, she isn’t going to complain. If she’s going to start embracing this new start she’s been gifted by the powers that be than she’ll enjoy every damn thing she does now and not take a single moment for granted.  
  
  
  
  
  
Carol is in the middle of turning on an oven timer for her casserole when it happens. Just the simple movement of flicking her fingers over the small round object, setting it to forty five minutes is enough to turn her entire world upside down in the matter of a few seconds.   
  
Her fingers clench and then spread, dropping the timer onto the counter with a loud thud and setting it off early, the shrill sound echoing through out the kitchen but she can barely hear it anymore because her mind is occupied by every memory she’s lost flooding back into her field of vision one after another, in proper succession and with all their required details fleshing them out. Rising up through her like helium inflating a balloon and for a moment she’s weightless, standing stock still and unseeing behind the kitchen island, too flooded with memories to process a single one and so she doesn’t, doesn’t see anything for the briefest of seconds but blissful blankness and then it all crashes down again, making her rush for the kitchen sink and vomit up her lunch from earlier that day, her stomach heaving and rolling as shivering hands clutch the stainless steel basin.   
  
She almost slides down the cabinets but the sound of someone else in the room, a woman’s voice panicked and high pitched startles her enough to right herself again but she doesn’t stop to see who’s there, doesn’t even look in that direction as she blows past the person calling out her name. She runs up the steps, taking them two at a time and nearly tripping over her own feet before entering the bathroom, shutting the door and locking it behind her. Then she does sink down low and hard, bumping her tailbone on the tile floor as she falls to the ground with her back up against the tub and knees to her chest, sucking in too much air at once in rapid succession but she can’t stop because everything is wrong again.   
  
A moment ago she was fine.   
  
More than fine, she was fucking happy and maybe that was the catalyst for what she’s experiencing now because how could she ever think she deserved that. Even her subconscious wouldn’t allow it. Had likely been waiting dormant for the right moment to betray her and did it ever. Shoving the rest of herself back where it belongs, right along side the new person she’s become and there’s no space left for both. They struggle against each other like two sides of the same coin, each trying to consume their opposite with every new scene that she sees.

The new part, the one she’d cultivated over the last few weeks isn’t strong enough yet to hold its own and the rest of her takes over in record time. Thrusting her back into the desolate, barren place she’d been festering in before the accident.   
  
She can’t even cry, at least she doesn’t think she is. Her face feels wet but her chest doesn’t heave with sobs and her shoulders don’t shake.  
  
The door to the bathroom vibrates with a loud knock, once, twice, three times then someone is trying the knob and finding it locked. Asking her to open it and pleading with her to talk to them but she can’t. Can’t see anyone, can’t do anything except sit on the floor and let silent tears spill from her eyes and the effort to try and hold herself together again is suddenly too heavy a task.  
  
The timer in the kitchen still rings loudly, reaching her ears even upstairs and when the sound finally ceases she can still hear it rattling in her skull, the sound almost a visible thing right next to the sight of her daughter coming out of the barn and Lizzie dropping to the ground with a bullet in her brain.   
  
  
  


  
He’s irritated that they didn’t get a cow out of the deal with Hilltop and if those fuckers think that his group is about to slaughter another one just for a chance at trading they’ve got another think coming. Except maybe Rick is already on board…maybe they won’t have a choice in the matter anymore once he’s convinced it’s the only way because if there’s one thing Rick is good at it’s making speeches and swaying the general public but Daryl doesn’t want to think about that right now. He wants to go home and find Carol and kiss her like he hasn’t seen her in weeks because it feels just about that long after the shit day they’ve had.   
  
She isn’t in the kitchen when he goes there first though, so he climbs up the steps and the sight of Denise on the floor holding up the bathroom door sends a knife through his nerves. “What happened?”  
  
She scoots over and stands up, giving him access to what he soon finds out is a locked door, sniffing through her own tears and looking guilty even though Daryl is pretty certain that whatever went down it wasn't Denise’s fault. “I don’t know. She was fine this morning. We talked and then she went home and I found some of that tea I was telling her about, that soothes stress and I brought it over and she was just…not ok. She ran away from me and up the stairs, locked the door and she won’t come out and I don’t know what the hell happened, Daryl.”  
  
  
“How long she been in there?” He’s trying the knob a few more times for good measure, calling out her name and asking her to let him in but he gets no response and every second that ticks by makes him more and more agitated, convinced he’ll bust open the wood and find her dead on the floor with her wrists cut open and blood spilling out. Or worse, that she’ll have already turned and he’ll have to put her down. He shouldn’t jump to such horrific conclusions so easily but something about this moment feels different…worse than anything they’ve tackled since she woke up a different person several weeks ago.  
  
“Maybe an hour.”  
  
“Fuck.” He’s had enough of getting no response so he braces himself and slams his shoulder into the barrier, racking it on it’s frame but it takes several more hard thumps before it finally gives way, slamming back on it’s hinges and revealing Carol at the other side of the room, leaning up against the bathtub and looking right through him like she has no clue he just busted into the room louder than a freight train.  
  
It takes Daryl a minute to do anything, too confused about what’s wrong and worried to make it worse but his feet move eventually, carrying him to her without further thought and then he’s on his knees by her side, expecting her to acknowledge him but she doesn’t and the blank look in her eyes haunts him more than the tear stains on her cheeks.  
  
“What happened? Carol? Look at me…tell me what’s happenin’ right now.”   
  
Even the soft tone in his voice and the easy ghost of his fingers over her shoulder prompts no reaction and he tries again, reaching up to cup her cheek, stroking the dampened skin and forcing her to look in his direction but she doesn’t connect with him at all, her head tilting with the pressure but her expression staying the same.  
  
“The fuck is happening?” He’s addressing Denise now, only getting his own confusion and ineptness mirrored back at him.   
  
He doesn’t know what to do, has no clue how to help when the problem won’t present itself but somewhere deep in his heart he knows that everything is different now. He can’t be sure yet if she remembers but something hit her with enough force to render her nearly catatonic and nothing else would come close.   
  
The urge to melt into the floor with her is strong, and he almost does. Almost just sits down and lets his entire world crumble into a million pieces around his feet. Everything they’d worked so hard to build together, everything he thought would be strong enough to withstand even something like this, threatens to shatter under the weight of reality.   
  
If he gives in he’ll be no more able to handle the situation than she is and something clicks into place before he can shift his weight and accept defeat.   
  
He has to do something, can’t just leave her here on the cold tile and so he focuses on the next thing. Which is getting her out of the bathroom and somewhere more comfortable.   
  
Carol is easy to scoop up and she doesn’t fight the embrace when he wraps an arm around her back and one under her knees and lifts, carrying her out of the bathroom and two doors down to their room, depositing her slowly on the bed and watching as she curls into herself.   
  
“Ima be right back.” He whispers it to her as he’s leaving, afraid that if he doesn’t turn away now he won’t be able to at all. He finds Denise just outside the door, pacing the hallway and looking distraught and any other day he’d feel like he has to try and help her, maybe say something to make her feel better even though he’s shit at that but not today because he has bigger problems and she needs to fucking help him.  
  
“You think she remembers? That what’s got her all…like that?”  
  
Denise nods and shrugs at the same time. “Shit, I don’t know. I really don’t. I think it’s at the top of the list of possibilities though because if finding out that dead people walk the earth now didn’t do this…well, there’s not much else that would except getting fifteen years of memories back all at once.”  
  
“What do I do?”  
  
He asks her like she has all the answers even though he knows she doesn’t and the way she gives him a sad shake of her head confirms it. “Sweetie, I don’t know. Just…be with her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I can’t help more. I’ll come back later…to check on you.”  
  
Then she’s hugging him, wrapping him up in her arms and she has to reach on her tip toes to do it but he stands there and lets her even though he’s not a hugger and he hates people invading his personal space, but fuck if he doesn’t melt into that hug she’s offering him. Resisting the urge to crash down against her shoulder and break apart because he can’t do that yet, Carol needs him and he has to focus on the next thing.  _Just the next thing_. One foot in front of the other and don’t move too many steps ahead because the further out he thinks the less control he has over his own emotions. If he has any control at all.  
  
Denise is pulling away only a few short moments after, walking down the hall and disappearing around the corner and he almost reaches for her again, wants her to stay because he can’t be left alone here with such a huge responsibility but then he realizes that’s exactly what his job is now and if anyone is going to stay with Carol it’s absolutely going to be him.  
  
She’s right where he left her when he returns. Curled up on her side with her hands tucked under her chin and her knees bent far as they can go. He sits on the edge of the bed, hesitant to touch her but more afraid of doing nothing so he reaches out, letting his fingers thread through her silver hair and brush it back where it’s grown long enough to cover her forehead and curl over her temple.  
  
“You remember somethin’? Something bad? Musta been. I shoulda been here, I’m sorry I wasn’t. But I’m here now…talk to me. Please.”  
  
He waits. For seconds or minutes, he isn’t sure, but each tick of the clock across the room brings him no closer to seeing her acknowledge him and finally he gives up, his voice defeated and strangled. “Maybe we’ll just lay here for a while. We can talk later….”  
  
She blinks a few times, quicker than before and he realizes how ridiculous it is to be dissecting her blinks but that’s what he’s reduced to now and rather than watch her look out a thousand miles past him he rounds the bed, kicks off his shoes and gets in next to her. Curls his body around hers before he can over think it, before he can assume that she wouldn’t want this from him now that she’s herself again and she doesn’t reject the gesture. Just lets him wrap her up in his embrace, enveloping her in his arms and pressing his face to the back of her neck, the smell of her peach shampoo mocking him instead of soothing his senses like it often does.   
  
He can feel her heart beating in her chest against his forearm, heavy but slow and its cadence is out of place. It should be rapid and flickering, he thinks, but even her heartbeat mimics her behavior.   
  
“We’re ok…we’re gonna be ok. Just gonna nap for a while, that’s all. Not leavin’. Be right here with you…”  
  
She doesn’t speak a word, not when the afternoon light drifting through the window blinds gives way to moonlight and not when the others return home, making the usual noises outside the hall but never venturing inside the cocoon of their room. He doesn’t sleep most of the night and he isn’t sure if she does either, but he must have dozed off eventually because the next thing he knows it’s morning again and after a brief panic when the previous night’s events return to the forefront of his mind he feels the solid weight of her still against his chest.   
  
Right where she’d been before, reducing the size of his world to the four walls surrounding him and the person within them.


	16. Chapter 16

He’s starting to think they may never leave this room.

It’s been two days since he carried Carol into the bedroom and watched her curl into herself and shut him out and she’s barely moved since. She gets up every so often to use bathroom, even turning on the faucet to wash her hands like it matters, some habits being too hard a thing to break he supposes, but even those events are few and far between now because she hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since this started. 

Hasn't spoken to him. Hasn’t cried. Has barely done anything more than shift around and sleep and it’s scaring the shit out of him. 

Daryl spent the first morning trying to get her to talk to him but every attempt was a failure and rather than badger her endlessly he gave in. Accepting that she wasn’t ready yet and assuming she’d eventually come around. She had to. It’s not like she’s just planning to waste away in here…except now he thinks maybe that’s exactly what she’s planning on doing and he’s hopelessly entangled in this downward spiral right along with her.

He’s made just as few trips off the bed as she has, only fetching water and food for them that she steadily refuses to even look at. He drinks half the water himself but has no desire to eat by the time the second morning rolls around and so he doesn’t.

Still tries to make her eat it though. Finding crackers in the cabinet and tomatoes in the fridge from the new gardens. Trying to entice her with both on separate occasions and getting similar results. They take up space in the trash eventually and he feels guilty for wasting resources they can’t spare.

Denise poked her head in the first day, offering him a little orange bottle of pills that she said would help take the edge off if he could get Carol to take them. Saying she sent Abe and Rosita on a run for medical supplies and made sure they tried extra hard to find whatever is in that bottle, but he can’t get them down her throat and he won’t force her to take them. Tried dissolving them in water but considering she won’t drink that either she remains drug free. 

He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. He’s not against drugs and if they’ll help he’d gladly medicate her until she can function on her own but this is just one more thing he can’t seem to make happen and he stops short of prying her mouth open and shoving them into the back of her throat like he might do to an animal. 

Feels wrong. Doesn’t want her to choke. Doesn’t want her to resent him. Maybe it’s not even his place anyway…

Rick showed up a few hours ago. Having the nerve to stand at the foot of the bed and ignore the fact that Carol was nearly half dead right in front of him and telling Daryl that they needed him on board for the attack on Negan. His voice urgent and persistent as if there were any chance in hell Daryl was going anywhere. 

As if he could fathom leaving this room if she doesn’t either. 

He did however, leave the bed. Just long enough to shove Rick outside the door, his hands roughly pushing on his shoulders while telling him to fuck off and maybe Rick realized then what a dick he was being because he didn’t protest. Just let Daryl manhandle him and wandered off after the door slammed shut in his face and the lock clicked in front of him. 

No one else has come since then and while Daryl knows it wouldn't take much to break the door down…he doesn't think anyone will anymore. Denise is still a wildcard, she could convince someone to force their way in but other than her they’re alone as they’ve ever been. 

He thinks maybe they’re all waiting for the day Carol slips away and he finally comes back down to join them again. They’d certainly not done much while she was up and around, choosing instead to keep their distance so why should he be surprised that they’ve drifted even further away.

Daryl spends all his time with her now and she doesn’t seem either bothered or comforted by it, but she lets him hold her, never fighting the touch or indicating that she doesn’t want it and he knows that he shouldn’t take that as her consent but he can’t just lay next to her and not be close. Not now. So he pulls her to him and wraps her up in his arms, listening to her shallow heartbeat against his own chest as it grows a little bit slower every day.

He has her half draped over him now, tucked into his side with her soft breath tickling his neck in gentle puffs and he uses it as proof that she’s still alive while he lays there staring at the ceiling, thinking of how everything that used to seem so important…isn’t now. Clean sheets, pilfered candy, his own insecurities about how long she’d keep him until she wanted to move on…all meaningless in the wake of this new challenge that he can’t seem to conquer. 

All he wants now is to hear her voice. To see her look at him instead of through him. To know that they’re strong enough together to fight off whatever chains them to this room.

He tries to talk to her at least every few hours, consistently failing, but it’s that time again and he’s not a quitter. Not yet anyway. They still have time.

“Maybe we can have some breakfast up here. What do you think ‘bout that?”

Carol gives no indication that she even heard him but he goes on anyway, having gotten used to the sound of his own voice and welcoming anything to fill the silence. “Someone made bread. Could have toast. Ain’t got no butter, but we’ll find somethin’ to put on it.”

He’s trying to tempt her with dry fucking toast of all things. Jesus. He is so fucked. So entirely over his head right now and the stark reality that he could very well fail permanently eats away at his soul every time he speaks and she doesn’t. 

He’s got one hand running up and down the length of her back. Soft and gentle, the little bones in her spine rising up to meet his fingers with every stroke and he tries again, whispering his next words into her hairline, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that maybe she’ll hear him enough to reply. “Talk to me, Carol. We do that now…we talk to each other.”

“I can’t.” 

It’s the first thing she’s said to him and her voice is raw and dry, cracking with the effort and making her wince but he can’t stop the tiny bud of hope that forms in his chest at the sound. “You can. I know you can. Just tell me what you feel.”

“Everything. I feel everything. From before….and from after.”

Shit. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Has no words of wisdom or sound advice or soothing platitudes. He has nothing. Feeling inadequate even this early in a conversation he’s been playing out in his mind for days. 

He needn't have worried though because now that she’s talking she isn’t stopping yet and she covers his expected reply with one of her own. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Daryl. For everything…I didn’t mean to…I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, I’m just sorry.”

“You don’t gotta be sorry. It’s ok, you didn’t do nothing wrong. Gotta drink something though, gotta eat something.”

She shakes her head against his chest, never having lifted it at all, even while she was speaking to him and the sudden movement feels out of place, nearly startling him. “I don’t want anything.”

“It’s been two days. Gettin’ dehydrated. You don’t have anything soon and you’ll just waste away here. Not lettin’ that happen.”

She doesn’t respond, her body heavy and flat along his own, her breath the same steady rhythm its been before and that’s when he realizes that she never had any intention of leaving this room again. He’d suspected before but hadn’t been sure, thought she just needed time to process everything before she could come back to herself again and begin working through this disaster but now he knows that was never in the cards. “That what you want? Just gonna lay down and die?”

“Just let me go, Daryl. You don’t have to stay. I’ll understand if you don’t.” 

He’s pretty sure his heart may have skipped several beats, just paused there in shock before it started up again because he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Not only that she has no desire to live anymore but that she thinks he’d just walk out the door and let her succumb to starvation. That she’d expect him or someone else to put her down afterward. That she’d risk hurting someone after she turned. 

That she’d leave him alone. 

None of this is her and he’s angry. Angrier than he should be because this isn’t her fault and he knows it but she’s effecting both of them now and for the first time in two days he’s agitated enough move her off him and sit up, watching her face for a moment even though she refuses to lock eyes with him. Probably assumes he’ll leave now that he has permission to let her rot away alone. Now that she’s offered him forgiveness for such a terrible act. But he has other ideas. Reaches over to the nightstand instead, pulling the gun off the top and checking the clip, seeing all the rounds in their proper place and the click it makes as he pushes it back together reverberates through out the room.

“You wanna die? That it?”

No response. She’s aware of what he’s holding but she won’t acknowledge it yet so he continues. Taking a deep breath and pulling the only card he has left. Terrified that she’ll call his bluff but ready to accept it if she does. 

“Not gonna watch you suffer while you starve to the death and I’m not puttin' you down either after you turn. You wanna die we do it now. Right now.”

Carol does look at him then, sitting up on her own and biting her lower lip. Her expression betraying her confusion and disbelief. She thinks he’s lying to her and maybe most of him is but he’s surprised to feel that a large part of himself isn’t. 

They can’t go on like this, that much is clear. It has to end now one way or the other.

“Leave it on the bed. I don’t want you here when it happens. I don’t want you to see me like that.”

Her voice is low and small, her fingers trembling in her lap and he shakes his head, reaching for her hand and wrapping it around the handle of the gun. Holding it in place firmly. “No, you don’t understand. You do me first.”

Carol squints at him, her hands moving away instantly but he holds them tight, pointing the gun in his direction and that’s when she nearly flies away from him, across the bed in a sudden panic. It’s more movement from her than he’s seen in two days and it’s clear she doesn’t want any part in what he’s implying. Tries to crawl off the side of the bed, to where he isn’t sure but she doesn’t get far because he grabs her ankle, fingers digging into the thin skin there and a startled gasp leaves her throat at his bold action. 

She hadn’t expected this from him and he hadn’t expected to do it, but he can’t let her leave. Not now. They’re too far in, so he drags her back into the middle of the bed, pulling her body under his until he’s half leaning over her and half straddling her, knees on either side of her hips to hold her in place and both hands wrapping around hers while he forces her to hold the gun to his own forehead.

“Do it. You’re killin’ me anyway. You wanna die this is how it happens. Shoot me and then shoot yourself and then it’s over. Can’t be here without you, don’t even wanna try anymore. We either live in this world together or we leave it together.”

“Please don’t do this. Please…Daryl, I don’t want this.” 

He can feel the bed shivering and he doesn’t know if it’s her or him, or both. Can see her eyes watering and he thinks she might be crying if she wasn’t so dehydrated that she can’t anymore but he already is, his own tears dropping down onto her cheeks below him and his face crumbling apart even as the cold metal of the gun presses into his skin. “You gotta decide. Right now.”

He’d begun this thinking she wouldn’t allow them to follow through on this fucked up version of a murder suicide, but now he knows better and he’s ready to lay down and die with her because the only way he’s leaving this room is if she’s with him.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“Wrong answer.” His finger moves over hers, dragging it into position over the trigger and leaving it there. He can’t do it for her even if he wants this to be over. She has to make the choice and he waits there with his eyes closed for her to end him. Hoping that whatever they see afterward, if there’s anything at all because he’s not even sure anymore, allows them to be together again. Maybe the afterlife will be better than this one, he thinks. 

“I don’t wanna die. I don’t…I don’t, please.” 

She’s trying desperately to pull her hands away from his, to loosen her grip on the gun and he lets her because she’s found the right answer and one look at her face tells him it’s true. That she’s not just saying what he needs to hear but that she believes it herself. The gun drops to the bed with a soft thud and then he’s sweeping her up against him, shifting to the side to she can pull her legs back under herself. 

She clings to him as the sobs heave in her chest, breaking free from her eyes in precious moisture she can’t afford to lose but it’s the best sound he could have hoped for and he holds her just as tightly, tucking her head under his chin and feeling her arms tighten around his back, nails digging into the skin so hard it hurts but he welcomes the pain because it means he’s alive. 

That she is. That they both are.

 

 

 

Five weeks later

 

“So…did you complete your homework?”

Denise raises a brow at both of them and Carol smirks at Daryl while he shifts in his seat. “How are we doing on that, Pookie?”

“You know I hate talkin’ about this. I’m all for this…couples therapy shit but do we gotta talk about…that?”

Denise nods matter of factly. “It’s an important part of a healthy relationship so….yes.”

Carol finally gives in an answers for the both of them, letting him off the hook this one time and noting how relieved he appears. Almost regretting her next words. Almost. “We’ve not only had as much sex as we possibly can, but we went for extra credit and tried every position we can think of.”

Denise nearly chokes on the air in her mouth and Carol only barely resists the urge to laugh, the bright red tint to Daryl’s cheeks isn’t helping matters either. 

“Oh…wow. You two get an A for effort, that’s for sure.”

“Need to get bonus points for throwin’ my hip out that one time…”

Carol scoffs at him, raising a sarcastic brow in his direction. “Well you’re not the one that almost landed on her head.”

He rolls his eyes, shaking his head dramatically and fixing her with a serious stare. “I had you the whole time.”

She pauses a beat, letting her mouth curl up in a soft smile. “Yeah…you did.”

They must have been staring at each other for an obscene amount of time because the next thing she knows Denise is clearing her throat rather loudly and gesturing to Carol, trying to bring them back on topic. “Other than potential or current injures and other than sex in general…how are you feeling about…all of this?”

That’s the question she isn’t quite sure how to answer but she tries her best anyway. “Terrified. Impossibly happy. Everything in between.”

She can see Daryl nodding in her periphery. “What she said.” 

“With Maggie gone…it feels like a second chance. Is that terrible? I know it’s not the same, feels wrong to even think it but…the timing feels right somehow too.”

She can feel Daryl’s hand slipping into hers, squeezing just enough to be supportive without cutting off her circulation and she knows it’s a struggle because thinking of Maggie never fails to upset him. She tries not to bring up. Knows that he blames himself for not being there with the others, thinks maybe he could have stopped her from getting taken and no amount of argument from herself or Denise can sway him yet. 

Maybe someday, Carol thinks. Maybe someday he’ll accept that he can’t save everyone, even if he somehow keeps saving her.

Denise smiles at them, pointing to her specifically. “It’s not terrible. You have every reason to feel that way. What happened to Maggie was awful but that doesn’t diminish what the two of you have now. She’d be so happy for you, I think you know that. Anyway…not having any more morning sickness?”

Carol shakes her head, wanting more than anything to lighten the mood of the room after dragging it down so effortlessly. “No. I think all the orgasms I’ve been having helped a lot. He keeps saying he’s afraid he’s gonna bean the baby in the head with his penis though.”

“Jesus, Carol. You gotta tell her that? I’m sittin’ right here.”

She does laugh then, much to Daryl’s dismay and so does Denise. Carol only feels a little bit guilty about making him blush so hard because he’s damn adorable when he does it and she never gets tired of prompting that reaction. “Yes, she’s a doctor. She’s heard everything. Besides, now she can tell you that you won’t inflict brain damage on our unborn child. Right?”

She looks to Denise for confirmation who nods enthusiastically. “Right. First, the baby is so small right now. So it’s way, way up in there, and second…no. Not a chance. It’ll be fine and honestly you’re gonna wanna have all the sex you can now because once it’s here you’ll both be too sleep deprived to do anything.”

Carol pokes him in upper arm, gently but hard enough to make him scowl at her. “See? Told you.”

“Ok. Ok, ok. I get it. Baby’s gonna be fine and we can fuck like rabbits. Check.”

This time it’s her turn to blush and she doesn’t even realize it’s happening because she rarely ever does. He’s not one to make those kind of comments in front of other people, that’s her job, and he catches her off guard with it. The satisfied look on his face telling her that it was a calculated move.

“Alright, I think you’re good to go. I have Rick and Michonne coming in next, so run along and work on your homework a little more you two dirty freaks. Also…this couples therapy thing is really taking off. Who knew?”

They don’t have to be told twice to leave, thanking Denise for her time and meandering back down the curved streets toward their house, only instead of heading straight inside to try out even more crazy positions that’ll throw out a hip or give someone a cramp they end up on the porch swing, shoulders leaning into each other while they sway gently in the breeze.

“Think I know why them couples sessions are such a big hit. She keeps tellin’ everyone to have sex. Heard Abe tryin’ to get Rosita to go but she’s wise to it.”

Daryl has his arm wrapped around her, pulling her into his side while he keeps his voice low and soft, speaking the words into the top of her head and she snorts. “Yeah…Denise really found an untapped market here.”

“Damn right she has.” She can feel that he’s about to say something else so she waits him out, letting him gather his thoughts and feeling his heart speed up just a little in his chest. “You really doing ok…with all this?”

She pulls back just enough to see his face, leaning her shoulder into the swing instead of him and nodding, her hand absently splaying across her lower belly. “I am. I mean…it was a shock, but I’m good. Really.”

She isn’t lying with her reply. This baby she never expected has tethered her to this world in ways she can’t explain, even to herself. For every fear she has about their situation, and does she ever have fears because this world isn’t kind to children or parents. She knows that all too well but there’s an equal amount of hope too and she’s latched onto it with both hands.

“I keep thinking of all the things that had to happen for him or her to even be here right now. Morgan had to knock me out…thirty six year old me had to assume that there’s no way fifty year old me could get pregnant…and really she wasn’t that far off base because statistically it’s nearly impossible…and even then, even after all that this little family we have now almost got snuffed out before it ever really began. All three of us could have died in that room….but here we are. Against all odds. Right where we belong.”

She hadn’t realized how close she almost came to giving up on not only herself but on everything she didn’t know she could have. That day pays her nightmares frequent visits now, showing her alternate versions of the outcome where none of them make it out alive, doomed to haunt those walls for all eternity because traumatic deaths imprint on the world. No telling how many ghosts there are now, but in her dreams they’re are only a few of many. 

Other nightmares allow the baby to be born only to have it turn a moment later, or worse, rip it’s way out of her through her stomach, all teeth and claws like something out of an alien movie. Making her roll and thrash and cry out into the darkness until Daryl soothes her awake with his soft hands and warm voice, telling her it was only a dream and that they’re all still here. 

Later, he’ll blame whatever she ate the night before, telling her to lay off the spices but she knows it’s only an attempt to reason away something he can’t control for her. 

“I’m just sorry it all had to hurt so bad to get here.”

“Was the only way. Maybe I could have lived in blissful ignorance forever if I never got anything back again, but it wouldn’t have been the same. And if I didn’t lose my memory at all…I don’t know where I’d be but I don’t think it’d be here. I wouldn’t change a minute, you know why?”

He shakes his head, waiting patiently for her answer and she smiles at him. “Because all of that gave me you. Us. And now...” 

She pauses, running her fingers down the side of his face and feeling him lean into her hand on reflex, his eyes fluttering closed for a brief moment before she tells him the most important three words she could say. 

“I remember you.”


End file.
